Mission Aviation Fellowship has been serving the remote areas of Papua New Guinea for over 60 years. Recently Mark Fox, the CEO of MAF New Zealand, had the chance to see first-hand the difference MAF makes. He was flying with a missions team in PNG when they made an emergency detour. A 4-year old girl had broken her arm in three places. With no roads in or out, the only access to her village was by air. Mark and the MAF team were able to fly her and her parents to a hospital for treatment. If not for this flight, her arm may never have set correctly and she may have experienced the consequences for the rest of her life.
In Western countries medical emergency needs are addressed quickly and efficiently. An ambulance often arrives within 15 minutes and be fully equipped with high-tech medical emergency equipment and highly qualified staff. It’s so different in Papua New Guinea—delivering medical help is extremely challenging in remote areas.
PNG is mostly jungle-covered mountains or swamps and there are very few roads. For many communities, medical care is several days trekking away. In medical emergencies (broken limbs, snake bites, pregnancy and birth complications), getting help without MAF is next to impossible. Likewise, many communities depend on MAF’s air transport for access to school teachers, health programmes and development agencies, Bible translators and church leadership.
Dave Rogers, a pilot with MAF in PNG, says: “Of all the flying I do I find medevac (emergency medical evacuation) flights the most rewarding. All MAF flights benefit the communities we serve in many ways, but nothing has a more immediate and tangible impact than a medevac. They are usually some of the most operationally difficult flights to manage given they come up at short notice, in the middle of our flying program, and often late in the day when weather or daylight is an issue. This makes it all the more rewarding when you get it to work“.
Each year MAF flies over 300 medical evacuation flights in Papua New Guinea. Help make more flights like this possible! Your donation will make all the difference in many lives.
AS HEARD ON LIFE FM, RHEMA AND STAR