Shenzhen traffic police will cooperate with Dongbu General Aviation Co. Ltd. to offer paramedics a helicopter service, according to an agreement signed Thursday.
The helicopters will be deployed when fatalities and injuries are reported in accidents where ground rescue can’t reach in a timely manner.
Police and helicopter service providers will share a data-sharing mechanism and offer ground support to ensure patients can be transferred to hospitals in a timely manner.
The helicopter rescue service will also cover natural disasters and expressway patrols, especially during travel peaks on holidays like the Spring Festival.
Air rescue is highly efficient as it can reach those in need quicker than ground rescue vehicles and is seldom limited by geographic factors.
The rapid response time will help save lives, especially those requiring emergency treatment in locations that are difficult or time-consuming for ground rescue vehicles to reach.
It is estimated that the survival rate of a person seriously injured in a traffic accident is as high as 80 percent if they receive medical treatment within 30 minutes. The rate drops to below 10 percent if they do not receive treatment within 90 minutes.
On Feb. 13, three Shenzhen residents, on their way back to Shenzhen, were seriously injured in a traffic accident on the Heyuan section of the Wuhan-Shenzhen Expressway. As they couldn’t be treated at a local county hospital due to inadequate conditions, Kingwing General Aviation Co. Ltd. and Dongbu General Aviation Co. Ltd. sent helicopters over the following two days to carry the patients beck to Shenzhen for treatment.
The trip from Lianping County Hospital to Shenzhen Hospital of Southern Medical University, about 250 kilometers, took 76 minutes.
If the passengers had been transported by road, it would have taken at least five hours. The traffic was regularly congested because it was packed with vehicles returning to Shenzhen after the Spring Festival holiday. As the passengers had purchased insurance for traffic accidents, they did not need to pay anything for the rescue.
The Shanghai-based Kingwing, which established a branch company in Shenzhen in 2016, set up the helicopter pad in cooperation with No. 7 Affiliated Hospital to Sun Yat-sen University and Shenzhen Hospital of Southern Medical University. Two helicopters and well-trained employees can be deployed for the service, which covers the whole city.
“The helicopter service network will cover other cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area,” said Chu Huapu, general manager with Kingwing’s Shenzhen company.
Shenzhen is one of the demonstration zones for the general aviation industry in China.
Shenzhen has more than 500 enterprises involved in aviation equipment production, maintenance, research and development.