Angel Flight has been flying rural Australians into cities for important medical and social reasons since 2003. Without a cent of government funding, the charity has helped country people get the healthcare city-dwellers take for granted: ongoing medical treatment for serious illnesses such as cancer and auto-immune disease, post-surgery rehabilitation, gynaecological and obstetrics screenings, as well as important social services.
It’s a repeat pattern of big-hearted volunteer pilots and drivers who offer their services for free to help rural Australians down on their luck, people who face long and arduous car or coach journeys and a great deal of extra stress to get the treatment they need. Angel Flight doesn’t provide emergency medical services, but the charity does offer much-needed transport for on-going treatment and care – bridging the gaping healthcare divide in rural areas.
Angel Flight chief executive Marjorie Pagani says the charity isn’t well-known in the big cities, but people in the country have usually heard word from friends or neighbours who were given a helping hand in times of need.
Patients like Bela-Amie Wakilongo, a boy from Mildura who emigrated from Congo DRC with his family when he was four. He now has sickle-cell anaemia, a genetic blood disorder which can lead to pain and potential organ damage, and he needs monthly treatment at a Melbourne hospital. The six-hour car journey to Melbourne would be extremely painful for the young boy, who would feel every bump in the road, Pagani says. “He has flown with us 61 times and he will continue to for as long as he needs to,” she says.
With travel logistics managed by a team of four flight co-ordinators of Angel Flight, passengers and their carers don’t have to worry about anything – the stress of long drives and difficult city navigation is eliminated. The staff ensure the plane is suitable for the number of passengers, their mobility, the travel distance and fuel requirements, and the potential for a return journey.
The trip might not be needed for purely medical reasons, it might be an essential rehabilitation session, it might be helping a family spend a little time with a child who has been in a city hospital for months, or helping a woman escape from domestic violence.
The Angel Flight organisation was founded by the late Bill Bristow, who had many doctor friends and had been hearing about medical clinics closing down across rural Australia, Pagani says.
Clinics specialising in oncology, gynaecology, obstetrics, in the wide range of medical fields were increasingly unavailable for country people.
A pilot himself, Bristow thought this ongoing medical withdrawal was tragic, Pagani remembers, so he started Angel Flight in an old Air Ambulance hangar in Sydney. He flew Angel Flight missions himself for years, until finally he was diagnosed with a melanoma and 12 years ago he asked Pagani to take over.
These days, as the need grows, Angel Flight is looking for more volunteers, especially in NSW, Far North Queensland and South Australia. About 3500 volunteer pilots are registered with the charity along with 4300 volunteer drivers, known as Earth Angels. To date Angel Flight has provided more than 65,000 free flights and more than 120,000 car journeys – much needed assistance for more than 100,000 rural families doing it tough.
The pilots usually land on regional airfields and country strips because most passengers come from nearby villages or country towns, Pagani says. A friend or relative drives them to the airfield and an Angel Flight pilot picks them up and flies them to the city.
The same pilot, or a fellow volunteer, takes them to the rural landing strip after the city visit. Angel Flight doesn’t means-test passengers, who liaise with the charity through their referring health practitioner: a doctor, remote area nurse, psychologist, mental health worker or social worker.
Pilots will often wait all day to take patients home after medical treatment. “We’re largely in the hands of medical specialists,” Pagani says, “but if we can do it, we get them out and back in the same day. That makes a massive difference; not having to get people to look after your children while you’re coming in and out of hospital.”
The pilots volunteer their time and their aircraft; the drivers donate their time and their vehicles. Angel Flight pays for the necessary fuel – and the looming oil crisis has already been factored in. Pagani estimates that this calendar year the charity’s fuel bill will increase by 50 per cent.
“We didn’t miss a beat in Covid,” she says. “And I can tell you now, we won’t miss a beat in this fuel crisis, because we keep a pool of emergency reserves so we don’t let people down. You can’t stop your chemo when you’re halfway through it.”
Angel Flight also looks to the terrible decisions that have to be made when a child dies in hospital. Pagani says mourning parents had told her how they were forced to airfreight their children’s bodies home, or have them sent by refrigerated truck, so she launched a specific transport service. The charity takes tiny bodies from major city hospitals home to their grieving families, strapping a little coffin into a passenger seat with all care and respect.
The funds for this Australia-wide charity come from individual donations, usually from country people, Pagani says, from corporate sponsorships and community organisations, and from small-town fundraisers.
As well as bringing passengers to Australia’s cities, Angel Flight flies medical professionals out to the country to provide health services to distant communities, and works with like-minded organisations such as HeartKids and BUSHKids to get the best healthcare to those who need it.
People in need of short-term and long-term assistance keep rolling up. The teenage girl from Monto in Queensland, kicked in the face by a horse, damaging her eye and cheekbone. The young Indigenous women from communities in Far North Queensland who get free gynaecological and obstetrics screenings close to home. The young girl from Chinchilla, west of Brisbane, who needed nearly 500 flights for dialysis.
The task is never-ending, the logistics sometimes difficult. Yet the burden is always willingly shouldered, Pagani says. “Without exception, our pilots and drivers say they get more out of this than they give.”