On 09/03/2013 22:23, charles wrote:
In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:
On Sat, 09 Mar 2013 18:38:23 +0000, dennis@home wrote:

On 08/03/2013 23:42, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Fri, 08 Mar 2013 20:25:39 +0000, dennis@home wrote:

The government does fund helicopters where they actually save lives.
Like mountain rescue by the RAF, etc.

AFAIK all the mountain rescue teams are charity funded. No help from
central goverment, I don't think any run helicopters. RAF Search and
Rescue is part of the RAF and principly there to rescue RAF personal
when they crash, rescuing the general public is training. That's
assuming that the RAF/MOD continue to fund RAF S&R, there has been some
talk about them out sourcing it...

However the helicopter air ambulances probably don't save any lives.
If you think about it they are always secondary units to arrive and
the paramedics that are already at the sceen have already done the
work to stabilise the patient before the helicopter is even scrambled.

Complete and utter ********. Car crash couple of hundred yards down the
road from here the air ambulance was here a good 30 mins before the
paramedic ambulance. The local "first responder" ambulance arrived in
about 5 minutes but the crew of that are only first responders not
paramedics. What they can do is very limited.

So how many better trained and equipped paramedics could there be if the
air ambulance money had been spent on them?

Irrelevant. More staff doesn't get the patient to the operating theatre
any faster.

indeed, a couple of days ago it was reported that ambuances were taking
over 2 hours to unload patients at a hospital in Norwich



Well there you are, spend the air ambulance money on more A&E staff, far
more likely to save lives.