E14 Gets Most Visits From London's Air Ambulance

Rachel Holdsworth
By Rachel Holdsworth Last edited 114 months ago
E14 Gets Most Visits From London's Air Ambulance

Photo by Martin Carey from the Londonist Flickr pool

It's National Air Ambulance Week and, to point out how much good work it does, London's Air Ambulance has released incident figures for the year so far.

To the end of August 2014, the trauma team in the sky treated 1,144 patients. 354 of these were road traffic accidents (133 pedestrians, 78 motorcyclists and 45 cyclists), 307 falls from high places and 282 stabbings and shootings. E14 is the most attended postcode (anything to do with the Blackwall tunnel?) with 27 incidents in eight months, swiftly followed by NW10 with 22, W1 with 21, N1 with 19 and SE1 and Croydon (CR0) racking up 18 each.

What you might not realise is that the amazing, life-saving work they do (they can perform open heart surgery on the scene, and use fast cars at night when the helicopter isn't practical) is all provided by a charity. So there's a point to what might look like self-congratulatory backslapping, and that point is that they always need donations.

What they're really gunning for is enough money to maintain a second helicopter. George Osborne allocated £1m in the most recent budget to buy one, but that means extra running costs. You can donate online or if you text LAA to 70800 you'll give a fiver.

Last Updated 22 September 2014