A LOOK BACK With Mark Vickers, Chairman of the Board of Trustees
Having been established in 1989 by a group of committed, determined and pioneering medics, London’s Air Ambulance celebrated 30 years of saving lives in the financial year 2019/20. In addition, during this period, we attended our 40,000th patient since our formation. An incredible milestone. Our founders recognised that seriously injured patients were dying unnecessarily because of the delay in receiving prompt specialist medical treatment. Today, our mission remains to save the lives of all preventable deaths from trauma within London and we have ambitious plans to enhance our critical service. During 2019/20, we treated 1,667 patients via helicopter from 08:00 until sunset and by rapid response cars at night or in adverse weather conditions. It is fitting and humbling to appreciate the faithful kindness of our supporters throughout all this time. Through their unbelievable generosity, our income for the 2019/20 financial year reached £13,608,076. Thanks to the truly outstanding efforts of the Gala Committee, chaired by Julia Leal and Fabiana Ecclestone, the event was hugely successful and raised over £608,000.
We were delighted that the work of the charity was supported throughout 2019 by the Duke of Cambridge. As the Patron of our 30th Anniversary campaign, we are deeply honoured that he has chosen to continue his support for us as Patron of the charity for the next three years. We continued to develop our community fundraising work, with our engagement focusing on building partnerships in local communities in London and recruiting two new members of staff into the team to support the expansion of this work. Further development of our learning and outreach activities enabled us to connect with over 10,000 young people in London. Emphasising that we are one of London’s local charities, face-to-face fundraising has allowed us to recruit invaluable long-term supporters, forming a valuable source of income for the charity. In 2019/20 we recruited over 17,000 new regular givers and 18,000 lottery players – these were strong results against our ambitious targets.
Our corporate partnerships with the Bank of England, Herbert Smith Freehills and Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner provided considerable support to us, for which we are enormously grateful. We also received the wonderful news that the Department for Health and Social Care would grant £1.4 million for the redevelopment of the helipad and the provision of crucial equipment. Our long-term partners, Zoll, in addition to providing six new monitors, sponsored the inaugural Resuscitative Science Symposium and continued to fund our Golden Hour Fellow, Dr Mike Kim. Dr Kim’s work in understanding the causes of death in trauma has provided a vital insight into how we can change our working protocols as we strive to end preventable deaths at the roadside. Special thanks are also due to our partners, Barts Health NHS Trust and Londons Ambulance Service NHS Trust; it is through this partnership that we continue to work together to push the boundaries of pre-hospital care. Because of you, our supporters, our teams have been able to provide world-leading care to patients 24 hours a day, seven days a week; you are an essential part of our charity and you are the lifeblood of the service. Thank you for all of your unfailing support.
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