A routine school drop-off flight turned into a life-changing mission for pilot Mel Higgins and the team at MAF.
“I was doing the normal scheduled school flights, and I was dropping off the last of the students into Gangan,” Mel said. “I got a call to say that we had a patient needing travel out of Gangan, which was great because I was empty back to Gove anyway.”
That patient was a pregnant woman who had been unwell for a couple of days. A request for pick-up had come through just after midday from the Low Acuity Patient Travel service (LAPT).
Booking Officer Sam Armstrong quickly coordinated the medevac.
“At around 12:00 today, we had an email request from LAPT,” said Sam. “It worked out well to be able to help a mother who was expecting and having a few issues. It was really good to be able to help her come into hospital to get the care that she needed.”
In the wet season, road travel is uncomfortable and arduous at best and can become a dangerous gamble at worst if a car breaks down hours away from help. A rough, ten-hour journey along a flooded and muddy track is risky for any patient, let alone a woman late in pregnancy.
I got a call to say that we had a patient needing travel out of Gangan, which was great because I was empty back to Gove anyway.
“The track at the moment is massive ditches and massive puddles of water,” Sam said. “I’ve heard a normal two-hour drive from Gove to Garrthalala would now be about six hours, so if you can imagine Gangan being one of the further homelands… who knows how long it would take, and how much of a bumpy ride that would be?”
The challenge of access from remote communities to full hospital care can lead to a relatively simple illness quickly becoming dangerous if left untreated too long.
“This was a lady who wasn’t looking very well,” Mel said. “She was pregnant and just said she’d been sick for a couple of days and having problems.”
Mel removed a seat from the plane to give the lady extra space, they prayed together, and they were up away and in short order.
“She was in a fair bit of pain trying to get into the plane,” said Mel. “But then once we got up and flying, within ten minutes she’d fallen asleep, and she slept all the way back to Gove.”
Upon landing, hospital staff met her with a wheelchair and transported her safely to care. What could have been a hazardous ten-hour drive became a smooth 40-minute flight.
In 2024, MAF in Arnhem Land conducted more than 400 medical retrievals on behalf of the Northern Territory Government.
In remote Australia, speed doesn’t just mean convenience, it means safety. And sometimes, it might mean saving two lives at once.