Transcript
JURGEN RUH: In our seven years we have conducted many works in Papua New Guinea, this is the very first shark attack I know of for the last seven years so shark attacks are very very rare. You know the people around Lablab, they are farmers, so he would have been somewhere off the coast, either swimming or spear fishing, I've got no idea, but people there are farmers, they live off the ocean and as I say, this is the first time I've heard of something like this happening.
BRIDGET TUNNICLIFFE: And his injuries were quite serious?
JR: By the time we got there the whole health centre must of run out of bandages, the leg was bandaged all the way from the hip down to the toe and he was bleeding all the way from the hip down to the toe. At the time we picked him up he had very low blood pressure and very faint but he remained conscious during the flight back to lae.
BT: So how quickly were you able to get there?
JR: We dispatched from Lae within 20 minutes of receiving the call, it took 40 minutes to get there, so within the hour from the call we had the patient on board, dripped, and stable and then it was another 40 minute flight back to Lae.
BT: Would his chances of survival been a lot lower if he hadn't had the quick evacuation with the helicopter?
JR: The way we saw it, he would have had a few hours, he would have had less than a half dozen hours left.
BT: You say you've been operating for seven years in that area?
JR: We've been manning the medivacs for pregnancy complications, that's about 65 percent of all the medivacs, 35 percent are either surgical, clinical cases, or cases similar to the shark attack, animal attacks, we only have crocodile bites and snake bites so this was the very first shark attack.
BT: Do you get some funding from the Morobe Provincial government?
JR: Yes, for the medivac programmes for the mothers it is funded by the provincial government, for the surgical cases the provincial health department pays for those flights. Funding this year has been coming through, first half of this year, very slow, all government departments were slow in paying in terms which are unacceptable to the rest of the business world, some government departments are 300 days, a lot of departments are about 180 days and there are basically very few departments paying their bills on time.
BT: Has that made it hard for you to operate?
JR: It certainly makes it very hard, absolutely, we've got a debit overdue and it comes in drips and drabs, it depends which department is after, six months possibly.
