KENT, SURREY & SUSSEX AIR AMBULANCE TRUST

The charity exists to relieve sick and injured people in South East England and surrounding areas by providing a Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) and Air Ambulance Service for the benefit of the community.

The Kent Air Ambulance Trust, a registered charity, was established in 1989, to provide an air ambulance service for the people of Kent. 2005, saw the introduction of doctors on board, and in 2007, the Trust expanded its service and launched a second helicopter to cover the counties of Surrey and Sussex.

The Kent, Surrey & Sussex Air Ambulance Trust's (KSSAAT) state of the art Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) aircraft operates 365 days a year, out of our bases at Marden in Kent and Redhill in Surrey and are capable of delivering our crews anywhere in our region in under 20 minutes flying time. Occasionally weather prevents the aircraft flying, so our crews also have rapid response vehicles to maximise their availability. Each aircraft is crewed by at least one experienced Pilot and a minimum of one Doctor and one Paramedic, who are trained in advanced pre-hospital care, which gives them the knowledge and skills necessary to assess and stabilise critically ill and injured adults and children. This means that a number of specialist clinical procedures that are normally only available in the resuscitation area of an emergency department can be delivered to patients at the scene, such as, general anaesthesia, advanced pain relief and for a small number of patients surgical interventions. Effectively, what we aim to do, as far as possible, is bring the emergency department to the patient and then take them quickly and directly by land or air to the most appropriate hospital best able to treat their injuries.

We carry blood and fly by night.

Our teams are also able, where necessary, to provide inter-hospital air ambulance transfers.

These services are available to everyone who lives, works, or is travelling through the region and is provided free of charge to those patients that require them.

We work very closely with South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SECAmb) responding to over 2,000 emergency calls a year. The normal operating area of our charity is therefore defined by the region that SECAmb covers and includes Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and a small area of North Hampshire; this region has a resident population of 4.5 million people.

The air ambulance is deployed by a specialist paramedic working on the HEMS desk at the control centre of SECAmb, who screens all 999 emergency calls coming into the ambulance service to establish if the air ambulance would be of benefit to the patient.

Kent, Surrey & Sussex Air Ambulance is one of 18 independent Air Ambulance operators in England and Wales and relies almost entirely upon the generosity of the public to keep the service going. Every penny of the approximately £6.5 million we seek to raise each year to keep the life-saving helicopters in our skies every day of the year comes from individuals, groups, businesses, companies and clubs from all over Kent, Surrey & Sussex.

It is thanks to the generosity of our supporters that the Air Ambulance has attended over 25,000 missions and continues to be available to every person living, working and travelling in our counties, should they ever need it.