Okinawa air ambulance conducts training
The drills were conducted in partnership with the fire brigades of five islands in the prefecture
Urasoe General Hospital, which operates air ambulance services on behalf of Okinawa Prefecture, conducted take-off and landing drills on 6 May in partnership with local fire brigades.
Okinawa is Japan’s southernmost prefecture, and is comprised of a chain of islands. The Okinawa Prefectural air ambulance helicopters conducted operations with fire services in five smaller populated islands – Aguni, Ie, Iheya, Izena and Kutaka – which are situated in ‘orbit’ around the island of Okinawa.
The purpose of the training operations – the first of their kind to be conducted in five years – is to ‘strengthen cooperation between the helicopter operator and the fire brigades ‘of each island that accepts helicopters’, according to local newspaper Ryukyu Shimpo. Previous attempts to conduct similar training was disrupted by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The air ambulance of Kagawa Prefecture recently revealed that demand for its first year of operation was 26 per cent higher than originally projected.
Oliver Cuenca
Oliver Cuenca is a Junior Editor at AirMed&Rescue. He was previously a News and Features Journalist for the rail magazine IRJ until 2021, and studied MA Magazine Journalism at Cardiff University. His favourite helicopter is the AW169 – the workhorse of the UK air ambulance sector! He also led the creation of Waypoint: The AirMed&Rescue podcast, serving as its Production Editor and co-host.