AVIATION DEPARTMENT

If you visit the Philippines, you’ll quickly notice that getting around this beautiful country of 7,641 islands is not easy by car. To travel any significant distance, you often need to take a ship or an airplane. Many of the heavily populated, remote islands can only be reached by sea. Even though some islands have runways, there are often few or no aircraft using them.

Since PAMAS (Philippine Adventist Medical Aviation Services) was established in 2007, the need for quick and efficient travel has been a serious issue. This is especially true when people living on isolated islands or in the mountain jungles have medical emergencies. What are their options? They could rent a boat for $2,000 to $3,000 (more than half a year’s wages) and hope for calm seas, or if they’re in the jungle, they could walk for hours on steep, slippery trails, carrying their sick loved one to the hospital.

Thankfully, with God’s help, this situation is getting better. PAMAS Palawan now has doctors and nurses stationed on each island with a runway. These health workers assess patients, share important information with our flight nurses, and coordinate care with hospitals on the mainland. This way, medical evacuations (medevacs) can be quickly arranged.

For indigenous people in the mountains and on islands without runways, God has provided a helicopter. With only a few established landing sites in the mountains, our helicopter pilots face the ongoing challenge of finding safe places to land and carry out medevac flights. What would take an hour of hiking through the jungle can be done in just 30 seconds by helicopter! These aircraft have truly become a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of people.

Besides medevacs, we also conduct humanitarian flights during natural disasters, transport medical staff to provide essential care and education in remote areas, carry supplies to missionaries deep in the jungle, and help build and support jungle schools. These are just some of the many ways God’s aircraft are used in Palawan.

The people of the Philippines need more than what PAMAS alone can provide—they need the hope, peace, and healing that come from knowing and following God. Please pray for our pilots and flight staff as they risk their lives to save others, both physically and spiritually.