Medivac flight patients in hospital care
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The condition of one of the stretcher patients airlifted back to Finland in the early hours of Saturday morning is extremely critical, according to Eero Hirvensalo, Chief Physician of the Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital district (HUS). The other patients are said to be progressing well after treatment.
A converted passenger aircraft carrying fourteen seriously injured patients from Phuket in Thailand touched down at Helsinki-Vantaa shortly before 4 a.m. on Saturday. HUS hospitals were put on special alert to receive the influx of patients in the course of the past week, but this has now been rescinded after the worst rush is over.
Reception and crisis counselling facilities will be maintained at Helsinki-Vantaa until the last of the evacuation flights has come in, presumably early on Sunday morning.
According to Hirvensalo, a total of 84 persons have received hospital treatment in the Helsinki and Uusimaa district. Twenty have since been discharged and allowed to go home. A further 127 persons were taken directly from the airport to other hospitals or to health centres, from where they were able to go home after treatment. One patient is in hospital in Turku and nine in Tampere.
In the course of the medivac flight that arrived on Saturday morning, operations were carried out on several patients. Infected and inflamed wounds were treated, and a number of broken bones were set. Two patients were on life-support or auxiliary breathing systems, and will require intensive care in Finland. The great majority of the others can be treated as normal ward patients.
The flight carried 37 doctors and nursing staff. Patients not requiring immediate emergency treatment were ambulanced to hospitals around the country according to their place of residence.
More on this subject:
 UPDATED SATURDAY 1.1. Police post revised list of missing persons: 193 Finns still unaccounted for in Thailand
Halonen expresses condolences in New Year’s Day Address, and speaks of "Finland’s largest peacetime catastrophe"
Revised police list of missing persons, Saturday 1.1.2005
Finnish forensic team leaving for Thailand
Helsingin Sanomat
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