Record high call outs for Wiltshire & Bath Air Ambulance in 2024
The charity responded to 1,343 incidents last year
Last updated 12th Jan 2025
Wiltshire and Bath Air Ambulance has revealed 2024 was it's busiest ever year, with a record number of call outs.
New figures released by the charity show it responded to 1,343 incidents last year - a 15% rise on 2023.
It also tops the previous high of 1,238 from 2020.
The charity responded to 243 incidents in Swindon, 109 in Chippenham, 90 in Trowbridge and a further 72 across Salisbury, Amesbury and Tidworth.
Charity Chief Executive, David Philpott, told Greatest Hits Radio said part of the increase it's down to the charity upskilling the clinical delivery it can provide.
More than half of helicopter deployments saw a critical care paramedic and emergency doctor on board.
David said: "That means that when the ambulance service get a 999 call and they're looking at what the most appropriate resource is, is it an ambulance? Is it to ask somebody to take the patient to the hospital in their car? Or is it to send a helicopter?
"They now know that with a helicopter they can get a specialist doctor to the patient where they are in their home or at the scene of the accident and do amazing things."
And while the record number of call out's isn't necessarily a happy record, David said he's proud of the team for responding to the needs of the public across Wiltshire and Bath.
But with costs rising, including paying for more paramedics and higher National Insurance contributions, the organisation could be facing a gap in funding.
"Medicine is becoming more complicated," he said, adding: "The more you can do, the more it costs to supply the equipment, to supply the personnel to supply the drugs, not just for us but across the NHS and generally, so we can only see that cost going up, but we're not really yet sure what that number will look like.
And while David said the charity 'never presumes upon the generosity of others', he's confident the public will help them raise their £4.5 million annual target.
He told us: "We go out to the people of Wiltshire and Bath and we tell them our stories.
"We tell them how individuals lives were transformed because we were able to get somebody to hospital quickly or to intervene and bring critical medical care to the roadside.
He said that story motivates people to become 'life-savers' with the charity.
"I'm not worried, but I'm not flippant," David said. "We have to keep making sure people understand that without ordinary people making small and large donations, we couldn't do it."