When you or your child is unwell the last thing you want to be thinking about it the cost of getting somewhere for medical treatment. Charity organisation Angel Flight co-ordinates non-emergency flights to help country people trying to deal with the triple trouble of bad health, poor finances and daunting distance. Caitlyn Morgan speaks with a local family and pilots about the benefits of the program. Pictures: Carmel Zaccone.
FOR more than 15 years volunteer pilots and drivers have assisted country people to access specialist medical treatment that would otherwise be unavailable to them because of vast distance and high travel costs.
Angel Flight launched as an Australian charity in April 2003 as an initiative of Bill Bristow AM and has since grown to have more than 3300 volunteer pilots and more than 4600 volunteer drivers.
There has been numerous Sunraysia residents utilise the service with 814 Angel Flights in and out of Mildura since 2003.
A joyful experience for Tommy
For one local family, Angel Flight has been their saving grace.
Mildura’s Tommy Watson was just three years old when he was diagnosed with leukemia.
After 10 months of intense treatment in Melbourne, he returned to Mildura in November where he was informed he would have to return every month for treatment for the next year.
“I would often see the ads and think how hard it must be for those families and then we became one of the families in need,” Tommy’s mother Natalie Hibberd says.
“Works can’t describe how much it means to us.
“It just makes everything so much easier.”
Natalie says while the cost of treatment and travel puts the family under a lot of pressure, so does the separation.
“While he underwent 10 months of intense treatment, we had been moving to Mildura from Melbourne at the time and could only see my husband and our other two children every few weeks,” she says.
“The separation from my partner and the other kids is the hardest.
“Without Angel Flight we wouldn’t be able to afford to take him to Melbourne every month for treatment.
“Angel Flight really have just been amazing.”
In December Natalie and Tommy experienced their first Angel Flight.
“It was our first time in a small plane and Tommy just loved being in the air and seeing the clouds,” Natalie says.
“The pilots have been just lovely people.
“It’s great to also have the drivers meet you at the other end and are there to drive you straight to the hospital.”
