A Bengaluru woman who was living in Portland, Oregon was flown from there to Chennai via an air ambulance flight as she was suffering from a critical cardiac condition. She started her journey from Portland on Sunday and landed in Chennai on Tuesday.
The entire flight journey took 26 hours as the flight made stops at Iceland and Turkey, the Times of India reported.
The report said that airlift cost her a little over Rs 1 crore and two super-midsized private jets were used to bring her to Chennai where she is now being prepared for a heart surgery.
The woman, a resident of Indiranagar, was living in Oregon with her children for a few years and developed a heart condition for which she was being treated there.
The ICATT air ambulance co-founder and director Dr Shalini Nalwad said the woman’s family felt the treatment in the US was not sufficient. The woman’s airlift began on Sunday from Portland, Oregon when she was moved from the Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center to the Portland International Airport.
After arriving at the airport, she boarded a Challenger 605, a super-midsized private jet. The jet is customized to act as a flying intensive care unit (ICU).
Dr Rahul Singh, co-founder of ICATT, an air ambulance service, said the ICU was readied onboard with a medical team which included three doctors and two paramedics who monitored the patient.
She reached Iceland’s capital Reykjavik after seven and a half hours. The halt was taken to refuel the aircraft.
After six more hours of flying it landed in Istanbul, Turkey. There the medical and aviation crew were replaced, barring a doctor who accompanied her throughout the journey.
It was in Istanbul that she was shifted to another Challenger 605. The flight flew to Diyarbakir airport in four hours.
In its final leg, the air ambulance took off from Diyarbakir airport and landed in Chennai in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.
Following the completion of immigration procedures onboard on the airport tarmac the lady was rushed to the Apollo Hospital where she was admitted.
Nalwad told the Times of India that the treatment period and the costs were more than airlifting her to India.
People familiar with the developments told the Times of India the woman was facing issues related to health insurance as she was an Indian passport holder.
She claimed that this ‘probably was the longest-ever aeromedical retrieval in’ India with the patient being flown in all the way from the US to India over a period of 48 hours.
(with inputs from the Times of India)
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