Harpia Squadron (7th/8th GAV) rescued, with the H-60L Black Hawk, a pregnant woman with complications in childbirth
The Seventh Squadron of the Eighth Aviation Group (7/8th GAV) – Harpy Squadron, based at Manaus Air Base (BAMN), performed on Wednesday (11/01), the Aeromedical Evacuation (AE) of a pregnant indigenous woman from the Wanapiki community, located in the Parima Polo Base, near the Surucucu region, in the state of Roraima (RR). The patient was suffering from serious complications during delivery that were life-threatening for both mother and baby.
The mission was requested by the Ministry of Health and coordinated by the Ministry of Defense, which called on the Aerospace Operations Command (COMAE). The operation was carried out with an H-60L Black Hawk helicopter of the Brazilian Air Force (FAB). After four hours of flight, having to perform plotter refueling in clearing (the process of transferring fuel from an external tank to the aircraft), due to bad weather, the helicopter arrived at the community. The patient was extracted and transported to Boa Vista (RR), where an ambulance awaited her arrival for removal to the hospital, where she received medical care.
The Commander of the 7th/8th GAV and pilot of the aircraft, Lieutenant Colonel Michelson Abrahão Assis, spoke about the rescue: “The logistical difficulties combined with the adverse meteorology, inherent to the Amazon Region, make the mission of saving lives an extremely rewarding challenge,” he reported.
AE
Aeromedical Evacuation (AE) is the action that consists in employing Air Force resources to remove and transfer injured or sick people to places where they can receive adequate medical assistance.
-x-
Editor’s note:
The Air Force Aeromedical Evacuation (AE) System is a unique and significant part of the nation’s mobility resources. Its mission is to provide time sensitive, mission critical en route care to patients to and between medical treatment facilities.
Medical evacuation, often shortened to medevac or medivac, is the timely and efficient movement and en route care provided by medical personnel to wounded being evacuated from a battlefield, to injured patients being evacuated from the scene of an accident to receiving medical facilities, or to patients at a rural hospital requiring urgent care at a better-equipped facility using medically equipped air ambulances, especially helicopters.
Examples include civilian EMS vehicles, civilian aeromedical helicopter services, and military air ambulances. This term also covers the transfer of patients from the battlefield to a treatment facility or from one treatment facility to another by medical personnel, such as from a local hospital to a trauma center.