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Profile: Evacuation specialist

Yasir Ahmed has a military background as part of the peacekeeping forces in the former Yugoslavia. He has also worked in the security department at Copenhagen airport where he helped coordinate logistics during emergency operations.

       
Yasir Ahmed: 'I always contact the customer after a case is finished'

I’m a senior consultant specialising in medical evacuation. We are five evacuation specialists in our team and we spend 90% of the time dealing with customers. There is always an evacuation specialist on duty, including the weekends, because it is important that our customers and partners know the people they are dealing with.


The biggest challenge for us is to make the whole thing run as smoothly as possible. There are many elements that have to come together when you are organising an evacuation. Behind the lines we are constantly working on pulling all strings together. This can be quite a challenge as many conditions apply, such as visa issues with local authorities, passport details and getting permission for stretchers on commercial airlines.


My previous experience of coordinating aviation helps me a lot in my work. I know how the business is structured and I know the airports and transits around the world. Because we have many customers in Africa and Asia it is important to know what's logistically possible when we have to evacuate someone.

I speak fluent Hindi and Urdu which is really useful. Sometimes we have to call a hospital in India in the middle of the night and the only person we can get hold of is the porter or guard. You build up a good relationship with people when you speak their language.


Finding the best solution


After the initial emergency call, we coordinate everything. We get medical data from local doctors and find out if the customer can travel on a commercial airline with a medical escort or whether we need to deploy an air ambulance.


We had a case in Dubai where one of our customers suffered from pancreatitis and required fine needle biopsy. They couldn’t perform this operation in Dubai, so we had to evacuate the customer to Europe for treatment. The problem is that many of our providers require that air ambulance crew have a night’s rest before they fly back. So if I activated an air ambulance evacuation late on Tuesday the passenger wouldn't be on his way before Thursday, because the crew first had to wait for flight approval and then spend one night in Dubai.


However, our customer needed urgent help so we had to get a bigger aircraft where the crew could make a quick turnaround. We agreed to transport the customer to the airport so the crew didn't have to wait, and we got him to a hospital in the UK the next day.


Building relationships

The skill in my job is to expect the unexpected and then try to handle it as best possible.

It's also important for me to follow up on the cases and I always contact the customer afterwards. It's a service to the customer and to ourselves so we can find out how we can improve anything next time we are in a similar situation.


 

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