Transforming the South Asian skies with expert aero-medical services

South Asian countries – India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan together received 25 million tourists in 2023, and an additional four million visited the South Asian islands of the Maldives, Mauritius and the Seychelles. The Southeast Asian countries of Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines received 91 million tourists in the same year.

Catering to this market size, ICATT Air Ambulance Service, with operational bases in India, the Maldives and the Middle East, with specialised, trained, aero-medical teams of 25 doctors, 15 paramedics, seven perfusionists and support staff, working under a robust framework of clinical governance, is emerging as a dependable and a highly professional service provider.

Having access to mid-range and longdistance aircraft, has proven its operational capability of connecting these countries, with over a 100 million tourists visiting its shores, to the rest of the world in times of calamity.

Operating since 2017

Since beginning operations in 2017, the International Critical-care Air Transfer Team (ICATT) has, to date, carried out 2,348 critical patient airlifts including neonatal and paediatric age groups, 298 extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) initiation and air transfers, and multiple government contracts to provide HEMS within India.

ICATT, founded by two doctors – Dr Rahul Singh Sardar and Dr Shalini Nalwad – trained anaesthetists and critical care specialists who worked in the National Health Service (NHS), UK, with a vision and a dream of setting up a world-class air ambulance service in India.

ICATT, founded by two doctors – Dr Rahul Singh Sardar and Dr Shalini Nalwad – are trained anaesthetists and critical care specialists who worked in the NHS, UK

With this objective in mind, the duo, under the aegis of ICATT, launched the largest air-borne medical services in Asia that has a flight trajectory covering the whole air space from Africa to South-East Asia. The bedrock of their concept, and their dream of establishing a professional air ambulance service for India, emerged while they were still in the UK. With high death rates on Indian roads, providing helicopter emergency response was the only solution left according to them, and the service mindset looked at rendering free service to those in need. This shared vision propelled the duo to establish a new service. While setting up the HEMS for India, because of their critical care background from the UK, they were highly effective in helping with inter-facility ICU patient transfers within India as well as airlifting patients across the world to India and vice versa.

Establishing a team

They were the first ones in India to have developed their own flying ECMO team of cardiac ananesthetists, perfusionists and paramedics. This became an effective tool during the pandemic, and they have achieved more than 290 ECMO initiation and transfers within 24 months – the highest in the world done by a single organisation.

Identifying the gap in their medical bench strength, they conceptualised and developed a specialised bespoke training programme for flying doctors, with help from air ambulance and HEMS organisations in the UK. The training programme is called FAM – Fellowship in Aero-Medical Sciences. The curriculum and course has been developed in the UK, and the first batch of FAM trained doctors have finished their one year training and are now part of the ICATT flying medical team.

ICATT operates out of three bases in India – Bangalore, Hyderabad and Bhopal. It has a base in Malé, Maldives, and is setting up a base in Dubai, UAE.