ACCESS to health services locally is improving with every year correlating with our region growing in population. Yet, there are still health issues that will require travel to larger facilities and primarily Brisbane.
Community Flights is a not-for-profit registered charity with a mission “to close the gap to healthcare access” for regional and rural Queensland patients.
Fraser Coast is very fortunate to have this free of charge aircraft transport for eligible patients and carers available to non-emergency medical treatment and services.
The organisation was created from a local pharmacist, Mark McMurtrie, who was hearing more frequent stories of his pharmacy customers struggling to find specialist treatment in the area.
“The long distance travel for heart, brain and cancer therapy is financially and emotionally difficult,” says Mark.
“Each month there is over 440 patients are in need of transport from Hervey Bay and Bundaberg alone.”
Some of their recipients include 11 month year old Jaxon. The young baby was born with bone and joint complications, having to travel to Brisbane since birth for many specialist appointments and surgeries.
Previously Jaxon was spending up to 10 hours travelling on a bus. He now can claim frequent flyer points with this community service.
While the flights required experienced pilots that volunteers can be a challenge to find, it’s the support on the ground that has became an important focus for Community Flights to achieve their goals for supporting people in need.
Some of the volunteer roles they require assistance with include:
Monthly Newsletter Organiser - creating monthly newsletter and distributing to local medical related businesses and clinics - 5hrs/month
- “Fun in fundraiser” Event Crew - helping to organise and run fundraising events - 5 hrs/week
- Community Awareness Crew - Running market stalls, meeting community groups or health related businesses - 10-30 hrs/month
- Grant Research and Writing Crew - 5 hrs/week
- Marketing Crew - Creating content, posting to social media, replying to messages and comments - 3-5 hrs/week
- Raffle Coordinator - setting up the online raffle, sourcing donations for prizes, uploading gift cards, contacting winners and businesses, filling in spreadsheets etc - 10-30 hrs/month
If anyone is interested in volunteering, they can visit the website and register - www.communityflights.org.au/join-the-crew/
