After an emergency flight by a Life Saver helicopter, Joshua Conway was successfully treated by neonatal specialists in Birmingham. Joshua's doctor put in a call to the Carraway Life Saver program, and moments later a Life Saver helicopter carrying a doctor, a flight nurse, and a fully equipped neonatal transport incubator landed at Cullman. The baby was in the hands of neonatal specialists in Birmingham in minutes. Joshua was one of 172 critically ill or injured Appalachian children flown to critical-care facilities in Birmingham in 1999, thanks to the Life Saver program, a helicopter transport service run by the city's Carraway Methodist Medical Center. Had the children not been transported by helicopter, those numbers might well have been reversed.
Time is the most important factor, and that's the purpose for the helicopter.
When it's needed, it's really needed. Many rural hospitals simply don't have trauma surgeons or neonatal surgeons, and the helicopter is the best means of getting a patient to critical care fast. When a baby is born long before it's due, or a car wreck suddenly threatens a young life, Birmingham or Huntsville may be the only option, and driving 20 to 100 miles or more may be nothing short of deadly. That was certainly the case when the car carrying Brian McClanahan, his cousin, and a friend slammed into a tree on March 5, 1999. It was evening and the three teenagers had just crested a hill on a winding country road 20 miles northeast of Birmingham.