Thanks to MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship), three vulnerable infants received urgent medical attention in Papua New Guinea.
‘One Monday afternoon,’ reports MAF Pilot Tim Neufeld, ‘I was thinking it was time to wrap up, but was asked to do a 15-minute flight to Nomane. A small baby was struggling to breathe, and recent heavy rains had caused several landslides, making it impossible to reach the nearest medical centre.’
After Tim landed, a young couple emerged from a large crowd, carrying their seven-month-old son.
‘I could hear the baby’s lungs struggling to fill with air and knew this flight was critically important. When the aid worker asked if another young girl and her baby could join my flight, another parent said: “Please, my baby needs a doctor also!”’
Although Tim was happy to give the man a few minutes to return with his baby, things suddenly took a turn for the worse, with the first baby turning blue. People were calling out: ‘Leave them! Go with just these folks!’ Fortunately, as Tim looked across the valley, he could see the young man running as fast as they could over the hilly terrain,
Mercifully, Tim knew that he only needed three minutes to get everyone into the plane, so – after what seemed far longer that it actually was – the family reached the airstrip.
‘After 20 minutes of flying,’ Tim concludes, ‘with the small baby lapsing in and out of consciousness, we landed in Kundiawa. As the three families left the plane, a taxi van was flagged down. Some people were “encouraged” to give up their seats, and the driver told to get to the hospital asap!’
As the pilot watched them drive away, the surge of adrenaline left his body. Having done everything he could to make the triple medevac a success, Tim prayed for the babies’ survival.
