|
Twenty Gallons of Avgas For Two Lives |
 On Good Friday Samaritan Aviation’s crew in Papua New Guinea received a desperate call from a remote village to help a pregnant mother who was bleeding to death. She was having complications during birth, had lost a lot of blood, and would never live to make the two day trip by canoe and over land to the only hospital in the province.
Samaritan’s pilots took off in the organization’s amphibious Cessna 206, called the Spirit of Paradise, and headed for Timbunke. Timbunke is a remote health station close to the mother’s village and is where the desperate pleas for help were being transmitted by radio.
Because infant mortality rates are so high in this province, babies are often not named until they are two years old. The area is home to marsh lands, hundreds of lakes, and a very large river called the Sepik River. There are few roads so access to the hospital during emergencies has been virtually impossible up until the arrival of the Spirit of Paradise barely over a month ago. There are 500,000 people who live in this area. The one hospital is in a costal town called Wewak and only a few minutes away from the airport where Samaritan’s plane is based.
Once in the air pilots Bruce Johnson and Mark Palm retracted the wheels and prepared the plane for landing in the Sepik River. Because of the rough terrain and lack of roads about ten minutes in the air equals one day of travel over the ground. After a short twenty-five minute flight the plane was overhead at Timbunke where a large crowd of people had gathered on the river bank and were motioning for the plane to land. In a matter of minutes the patient, named Antonia, was loaded in the stretcher. Antonia, a mother of four, was close to death and virtually unresponsive as a local health worker held a drip line in the cabin of the plane for her.
The Spirit of Paradise took off of the river and headed for Wewak as fast as it could go. Inside was not only a young mother clinging to life but also the realization of a dream for many people who generously support Samaritan Aviation.
When the plane landed in Wewak an ambulance took Antonia to the hospital where she received emergency surgery. Doctors estimate that she would have lived another thirty minutes without care. Today Antonia and her new baby boy are doing fine at Wewak’s Boram Hospital.
A village that would be mourning the death of one of their members will soon celebrate the life of a new baby boy. It is with humble gratitude we present the first two lives saved by the Spirit of Paradise. They were literally snatched from the brink of death and news of this one mission will impact a village with God’s love. We offer our most sincere thanks to everyone whose prayer and support made this flight possible.
People Are Forever!!!
|