Wiltshire Air Ambulance upping fundraising target for 2024
The charity need to raise £4.5 million this year
The cost of saving lives for Wiltshire Air Ambulance means their fundraising target's having to rise in 2024.
The charity, which is dependant on public funding as it gets no support from the Government, now needs to raise £4.5 million, half a million more than 2023's target of £4 million.
Chief Executive David Philpott told Greatest Hits Radio that most people don't realise the charity is so reliant on the public.
"All of the county and regional air ambulance is rely completely on general donations. Were it not for the public, there would be no air ambulances at all," he said.
Last year saw the charity called to 1,167 incidents across the county and surrounding areas, which a rise of 10% on the year before.
Charity Chairman Rob Kevan said they're committed to providing better care for patients:
“We continue to build resilience within our aircrew rota, with more pre-hospital doctors now on board than ever before," he said, adding: "We remain committed to advancing the training and development of our critical care paramedics and trainee critical care paramedics."
Mr Philpott told us that the charity's increased costs were mostly as a result of inflation.
"Inflation has been running at 10% and although inflation is reducing, it's only reducing in terms of the rate at which it's increasing.
"In other words, prices aren't going down, so most of the costs that we've incurred over the last 12 months or so during this period of time are a direct reflection of inflation."
But the evolution of the service provided by the charity is also contributing to the growing cost.
"We have more and more doctors on board and we recruit those from local hospitals.
"They're still working under their hospital contracts, but then come and do a day or two with us.
"We have to reimburse those hospitals for the full cost of those doctors," Mr Philpott said.
Air Ambulance interventions are crucial in saving lives and in getting people to the right hospitals quickly.
Mr Philpott said that while the air ambulance service is only required at comparatively fewer incidents, they do tend to be the most complex and challenging scenarios.
And they're vital in easing the pressures on a struggling healthcare system.
"Our interventions with these advanced clinical skills at these pinch points of crises do relieve the whole system somewhat, because we're getting to the patients quickly, getting them to the right hospital quickly, and therefore the outcomes are exponentially better for those patients"