Rotary support air ambulance charity

Saddleworth Rotary Club President Clint Elliott presents Angela Vyas from Yorkshire Air Ambulance with a cheque for £500 donation to the charity

It’s a common misconception the Yorkshire Air Ambulance Service receives no funding from the National Health Service, but is a charity relying entirely on donations and funds raised by local people to support its continued operations and future development.

This was just one of the facts Saddleworth Rotary Club members learned when Angela Vyas from the Yorkshire Air Ambulance Service came to talk to the Club at a recent meeting. 

Formed in 2020, the YAA has developed into a service operating 365 days a year from its current base at Nostell Priory.

It provides this service across Yorkshire and its environs to around five million people.

A proven life-saving facility for people in a variety of difficult situations, the air ambulance works in conjunction with NHS ambulance service to improve the chances of those injured or who fall ill of a successful recovery in situations where time is of the essence.  

Providing this service costs in the region of £19.000 per day and the Service relies entirely on donations and the fund-raising efforts of those it serves and is rightly seen by many as their local emergency life-saving service.

Thanking Angela for her informative talk and presenting her with a £500 donation to the charity, Saddleworth Rotary Club President, Clint Elliott, said: “We knew how important the Air Ambulance Service is to the people of Yorkshire, but you have given us a much better understanding of how much that service relies on the generosity of those same local people.”

Angela thanked the Club members for the invitation and the generous donation saying how important it was that people understood how the Yorkshire Air Ambulance was funded in order for the service to continue. 

For more information about the service, go to the Yorkshire Air Ambulance website at: www.yaa.org.uk

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