Health
1News

After decades of campaigning, Christchurch Hospital finally has a helipad

September 3, 2020

Until now, it’s been the only major hospital in New Zealand without a helipad.

On a crisp Canterbury morning, Kate Murney and her family were the first to land on the helipad at Christchurch Hospital's new Hagley Building, but none of them were patients - unlike Kate's last experience.

She fell critically ill with septicemia in 2013. Back then, there was no helipad based at the hospital.

So she was flown from Ashburton, dropped at Hagley Park, then transported to hospital by ambulance, adding 13 minutes to her trip.

"That 13 minutes was so scary, it was the unknown," says Kate's daughter, Tara, who was nervously waiting for her mum to arrive at the hospital.

"I believe, in the past, that 13 minutes would have been the difference between life and death for some people." 

Kate says she was only given a small chance of surviving. 

Former clinical leader of the Canterbury Air Retrieval Service, David Bowie, treated Kate in ICU, where she was in a coma for two weeks.  

"We were very worried, there wasn't much progress," he says.

"Usually in ICU lack of progress is the same as going backwards, really, so we were pretty concerned that she was not progressing.

"There was a long time when we weren't so sure."

Christchurch Hospital is home to the busiest trauma centre in the country, with around 800 rescue missions each year.

But until now, it was the only major hospital without a helipad.

Bowie has been pushing for one for 20 years.

"In some places every minute counts and that's what we have been focusing on for all this time," he says.

There have been plans for a helipad in 1998 and 2009; neither came to fruition.

In 2018, the Māia Health Foundation stepped in, helping raise $2 million towards the project.

"We ran the 13 Minutes campaign. We called it that because that's the average time it takes for the patients once they land in Hagley Park to then be transferred through to the hospital," chief executive Michael Flatman says.

The funding has allowed the helipad to be 30 per cent bigger than originally planned, which means two helicopters can land at the same time. 

It's also got the country's only rooftop clinical support unit to provide specialist treatment immediately upon landing.

"It's just a completely different process than landing in a cold drafty park, exposed to the elements, loaded in the back of an ambulance, bumped around the roads, unloaded in the emergency department, then having to find their right place in the hospital," Bowie says. 

Rick Knight, a Westpac Rescue Helicopter intensive care paramedic, landed the family at the helipad this morning.

He says the new facility has been a long time coming.

"I've been doing the job for 24 years, on the helicopter side of it. We've been waiting for so long to have an appropriate helipad for Canterbury and the whole of the South Island," he says.

"Now we've got this to land on, it's just incredible." 

The helipad will be fully operational when the new hospital opens to patients in November.

SHARE ME

More Stories