‘We need every community to get behind this service’
ANN KELLY was kept alive for over an hour-and-a-half by a volunteer doctor, while emergency services cut her from her car, following a horrific road traffic accident.
The site manager for a construction company was travelling home from work in Cork City to Bandon when her car was involved in a head-on collision in 2010. The nearest ambulance at the time was 20 minutes away in Macroom.
Now executive officer of the Irish Community Air Ambulance, she understands, better than most, the importance of a Rapid Response service, as one of its doctors saved her life.
“The volunteer doctor from West Cork Rapid Response was on the scene in 10 minutes,” Ann (pictured below) recalled. “It took one-and-a-half hours to cut me out of the car. He was able to keep me alive until that happened.”
Three months later, when she was finally discharged from hospital, she organised a fundraising barbecue for Rapid Response with the help of family and friends. They raised €2,000.
Ever since, she’s been involved, firstly, in a fundraising capacity and now as the charity’s executive officer.
“When I got in contact with John Kearney and he told me how they were rolling the service out across the rest of the country, I decided it was something I wanted to get involved with,” she said.
“The logistics of getting an emergency-room doctor to the scene of an accident or a medical emergency is difficult. But if you have a helicopter with a doctor in it that can reach anywhere within 30 minutes; we can cover the south of the country and more lives will be saved.
“That’s what we want to do but there’s a lot of work needed to fund those doctors,” she added. John Kearney says the support of every community is vital to keeping the service going.
He said: “It will cost about €1m for the rest of 2017 and there are 1.1 million people in the catchment area. We’re planning town hall events in every town but we need every community to come in behind this and support it because it affects so many people.”