Maltese company lodged cheapest tender; Air Force holding fort
The company to which the government granted a five year contract for emergency medical helicopter transport does not have helicopters, or pilots.
Just that sentence is enough to prompt disbelief. But according to Expresso, the government knew perfectly well what it was getting into, and has left the Air Force ‘holding the fort’ while the contracted company, Gulf Med, based in Malta, gets itself organised.
The paper says that however Gulf Med manages the process, it is unlikely to be ‘ready’ before September.
That leaves the Air Force providing ‘four helicopters’ to serve INEM (the national institute for medical emergencies) in the interim – only one of which is authorised to fly at night.
In other words, if there is more than one emergency in any part of the country, at night, during the summer, requiring emergency helicopter transport, there won’t be enough helicopters available. And, depending on the geographical location of the medical emergency, air transport may not come as quickly as it should.
The situation of emergency medical helicopter transport falling short is nothing new, it is just remarkable that it has been allowed to continue this long.
Expresso is sparing with the financial details: the Gulf Med contract has cost the government €77.4 million, and the value of the interim agreement with the Air Force (decided with no recourse to tenders) has not been given. But its shortcomings are already clear.
Says the paper, proof that the nighttime service is being run from Montijo Air Base came in a post by the 751 Squadron over Facebook this week: “In the early hours after the Air Force assumed a medical transport mission for INEM: Squadron 751 had to transport a critical patient from Chaves to Monte Real. The mission was realised at night, totalling a flight of four hours and 25 minutes”.
As Expresso points out, time in the air would have been a great deal less had one of the other helicopters being used only during the day been authorised to fly at night.
The other helicopters are a Koala, stationed at Beja air base, and a Koala and a Black Hawk operating out of Ovar. The Ovar base would have been a great deal closer to Chaves.
Cutting to the chase, Gulf Med has blamed the government for this logistical shambles, or as Expresso calls it, a “lack of diligence”.
Source material: SIC Notícias/ Expresso
