Great North Air Ambulance hopes to expand to 24/7 critical care in Cumbria

The Great North Air Ambulance says it hopes to expand its service in Cumbria to provide critical care seven nights a week.

Its helicopters are not allowed to fly at night, so instead it uses rapid response vehicles at that time.

They carry the same life-saving equipment as their airborne counterpart and are staffed by a paramedic and doctor team.

Recently it has increased that service from two to four nights a week, covering Thursday to Sunday.

Lee Salmon, part of GNAA, says the organisation wants to go further.

He said: "What we've found is we're helping a lot of people in those hours and typically the nights that we're not on there are other jobs and scenarios where we could actually have been really useful so we've looked long and hard at the figures and we've rallied the community into supporting us in terms of fundraising and we're really proud to announce that we've managed to expand our service to four nights."

Last year these vehicles were deployed 154 times to incidents including road accidents and cardiac arrests. The goal is to operate seven nights a week but that is dependent on raising the money needed as the charity relies purely on public donations.

Its use of helicopters remains just as important as ever but it's hoping to add to that by providing critical care 24 hours and seven days a week in the near future.