Doctors in the air to deal with emergencies
Yue Fei, an assistant chief physician at Ruijin Hospital, recalls how he helped a girl with fever on a long-haul flight in 2017 with a China Eastern flight attendant.
China Eastern Airlines launched a new round of cooperation with Shanghai Volunteer Physicians League on Tuesday to enhance its in-flight first aid service.
An in-flight medical expert scheme has been launched to establish a database of doctors among the airline's passengers in the case of an emergency. Over 800 doctors have volunteered to join the scheme and assist crew members in urgent medical cases.
Using its in-flight WiFi service, flight attendants are also able to communicate with doctors on the ground, the airline said. Nearly 100 of its passenger aircraft have been equipped with in-flight WiFi facilities.
"Timely medical rescue is vital to the patients with acute illness in the air, especially heart disease," said Zhao Wei, the league's deputy secretary general. The league, initiated in 2015, has over 1,500 members, mainly chief physicians and young medical experts from local hospitals.
More than 20 in-flight medical cases happen every million flights worldwide, including some involving fatalities, according to statistics from the International Civil Aviation Organization.
China Eastern alone had over 100 such cases in the past two years, with flights diverted multiple times due to medical emergencies.
"It is necessary and urgent to establish such a scheme to ensure the safety of passengers in the air, especially during intercontinental flights," said Yue Fei, an assistant chief physician at Ruijin Hospital.
Yue, a senior member of the scheme, helped treat a girl with acute fever on a flight from Vancouver to Shanghai in October 2017. Thanks to his diagnosis and treatment the girl, who was traveling with her schoolmates, recovered during the long-haul flight.
The same year, Yue helped a French woman on a flight from Shanghai to Paris who suddenly fell unconscious after takeoff.
Liu Shaoyong, president of CEA Holding, said the scheme is expected to be further expanded to include doctors in Beijing and Guangzhou.
The airline and the league have released an in-flight first aid handbook to guide flight attendants and passengers in dealing with mid-air emergencies.
English terms for each condition and its symptoms have been marked in the book for Chinese flight attendants to aid better communication with foreign passengers.
