PNG: Sepik River Medevac
Flight schedules often don’t go as planned when the isolated people of Papua New Guinea depend on MAF for medical evacuations (medevacs). On the final Sunday of an outreach weekend in the western Sepik region, pilot Paul Woodington planned to attend the local church and fly to another village before heading back home to Wewak when a call came through for an urgent medevac. At Samban in the east Sepik River area where missionaries Jesse and Karie Pryor work, a new mother with a retained placenta following a birth and a woman with serious hypertension needed an urgent evacuation to the hospital in Wewak. Dropping all previous plans, Paul made his way to Samban.
At the bright green airstrip patch in the middle of dark green jungle, Paul met Jesse Pryor who came ahead on an ATV with Jenita, the woman suffering from hypertension.
Paul carefully helped her off the vehicle and onto the plane. At the far corner of the airstrip, a procession appeared of men and women, several carrying Stella Jacuru on a stretcher with her aunt Ierena walking nearby with a newborn girl in her arms.
When they reached the plane, Paul placed the MAF stretcher under her, a brilliantly designed contraption that splits in the middle allowing it to be placed under a patient from both sides and hook underneath with very little movement of the patient. Once on the plane, Paul hooked up the IV to a latch on the ceiling and took off for Wewak.
Without the plane, getting to Wewak from Samban requires both a river then road trip. The river takes about three hours by canoe when the water is high but can take up to six hours when it is low. Once you reach the road it’s another two to three hours by car.
“It’s only 62 miles from here to Wewak,” Jesse says. “By air that’s 25 minutes. By boat and car, it’s about 6 hours minimum. So in a case like today, time is of the essence. It’s good to have the plane.”
In the two previous weeks, Paul had flown 14 medevacs.
“It was flat out. Every day. A snakebite by a Death Adder from Samban. It immobilizes your body until death. By the time I picked him up he had lost his speech and some ability. Praise Jesus he lived. A retained placenta patient – a common thing for pregnant women. From Telefomin I medevaced a quite serious woman in childbirth that was probably having a heart attack as well. She had a cesarean. Against all odds, praise Jesus she lived. There was one guy with a terrible back problem and couldn’t move. Had another guy, an expat missionary in Ambunti, who was having a heart attack. Those are just some of the recent war stories. At the moment, it’s an adventure a day.”
Medevacs are rewarding but stressful. Much of the stress stems from bad weather that delays the medevac. Earlier in the year, Paul medevaced a passenger who died after reaching the hospital. “That was my first death this year. It happens, but with all the deaths we have here, there’s a lot of people we save.”
Paul’s wife Clare has a ministry of providing medevac packs with some basic essentials for both men and women coming from the bush for medical emergencies. Particularly for new mothers, the packs include sanitary supplies, a blanket, and other misc. baby items. The Woodington’s church has helped donate toward the packs, and Clare also makes and sells handbags out of PNG coffee sacks to help finance the project. As much as possible, Clare visits the medevac patients at the hospital.
“We do a lot of medevacs out of Samban,” Jesse Pryor says. “MAF is one of the key providers for medical evacuations via air. No one else comes out to an airstrip like this, and MAF makes it affordable for us to be able to help the local people.”