CHARITY Swift Medics, which has saved lives across Wiltshire, Bristol and Bath with its emergency response doctors, is celebrating after being awarded £95,000 in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement.

The funds will come from the Libor fund set up by the Government to handle fines imposed on banks like Barclays in the wake of the interbank lending rate rigging scandal in the City of London.

When it was announced that all the funds will go to supporting armed forces and emergency services charities Swift Medics applied for the money to buy five state-of-the-art portable vital signs monitors/defibrillators.

Doctors from Swift Medics attend critical incidents and emergencies across and around the South West, making them the only 24-hour emergency doctors in the region.

Although they are volunteers and receive no NHS funding, they are called out by and work alongside the other emergency services including air ambulances.

Ambulance services in the UK do not routinely send out doctors to the scene, meaning vital time can be lost in providing the critical care many accident and emergency victims urgently need.

A doctor from Swift was the lead medical adviser last year at the scene of the Bath tipper truck tragedy in which four people lost their lives and Dr Ed Valentine was at the scene of the fire in Manchester Road, Swindon, alongside paramedics from South Western Ambulance Service and Wiltshire Air Ambulance.

Swift Medics are entirely funded by the public through fundraising and through grant monies they are awarded and all their doctors are volunteers who are on call for Swift alongside their other NHS duties.

Chairman and medical trustee Jonathan Glover said: "For a small charity like Swift Medics, a grant of this size will make a phenomenal difference to the amount of state-of-the-art specialist equipment we can buy to assist us to do an even better job at the scene of accidents and emergencies.

"We are absolutely delighted that our work has been recognised with a grant from the Libor fund alongside much larger charities and we hope that is testament to the outstanding efforts of our team in the South West in attending accidents and emergencies.

"The medical rationale behind what we do is simple: the sooner critically ill patients receive care from a specialised doctor and paramedic team, the more likely they are to survive or avoid long-term disability. Swift Medics provide the doctors who lead these teams."

  • Six volunteer doctors cover the region for Swift Medics and more are always needed.
     
  • Over 45 per cent of the emergencies attended by doctors from Swift Medics are road traffic collisions - other serious conditions include cardiac arrest or sepsis where emergency treatment before reaching hospital has meant the difference between life and death.
     
  • Swift Medics raises funds to equip and train volunteer doctors and finance call-outs, each one costing £75 on average.

More information can be found here: www.swiftmedics.net