Responding to high demand for repatriation and medevac flights, FAI’s air ambulance division has conducted almost 70 COVID-19 patient flights since March 2020. These efforts were supported by EpiGuard’s EpiShuttle single-patient isolation and transport system.
In April 2020 FAI racked up nearly 800 hours of flying, mostly on medevac missions. So far FAI has used EpiShuttle to transport patients in 47 countries, including Iraq, China and South Sudan.
“I am immensely proud of the way FAI Air Ambulance and our talented team of professionals responded to the immense challenges of the pandemic,” said Volker Lemke, who heads up FAI’s Air Ambulance division. “We have collaborated with EpiGuard on further development in safe isolation and transport. Our investments in the EpiShuttle have increased our efficiency in COVID-19 transport and we have had flights with CBRN patients with the EpiShuttle as well.”
A map showing FAI’s EpiShuttle flights to date
To date, FAI has been to 69 airports with the EpiShuttle, which is designed specifically to facilitate the safe transportation of contagious patients. EpiGuard’s team of medical experts and engineers developed the EpiShuttle based on analysis and clinical first-hand experience from previous global epidemics. The team’s medical background ranges from intensive care to infectious diseases, internal medicine and anaesthesiology, and transport medicine.
“Collaborating with a professional partner such as FAI gives us first-hand information on the use of the EpiShuttle as well as insight to practicalities you only experience in the field of duty,” said Ellen Cathrine Andersen, CEO at EpiGuard.
FAI has been nominated in the Air Ambulance Company of the Year category in this year’s International Travel & Health Insurance Journal (ITIJ) Industry Awards.
