“The assessment of foreign colleagues about the possibility of air transport of a child with polytrauma once again highlights the inadequacy of the Bulgarian HEMS“, wrote Dr. Blagomir Zdravkov on Facebook a few days ago, adding that once again “we exposed ourselves to foreigners.“
Dr. Zdravkov is a chief consultant in pediatric emergency and intensive care medicine, director of the capital's pediatrics and manager of the Children's Hospital in Burgas. The reason for his publication is the case of a boy from Israel who was injured in the jet accident near Aheloy.
„I was referring to a specific case from the hospital in Burgas, where it became clear that colleagues from Israel came and, giving an opinion, said that the patient could not be transported by air. Something for which Bulgaria should have qualified specialists to make this assessment“, explained Dr. Zdravkov on „This Sunday“ on bTV.
However, Bulgarian doctors give the „green light“ for the boy to be transported by helicopter.
„This patient has a severe head injury. When these patients in the acute phase are subjected to air transport, the physiological changes in altitude themselves lead to aggravation of the patient's condition“, explained Dr. Zdravkov.
“The problem is what algorithms air ambulance works on. We saw that the primary missions began only now, after the Minister of Defense issued a statement explaining the main mission and purpose of HEMS“, pointed out Dr. Blagomir Zdravkov.
In his words, eventually helicopters began to go to the mountains to pick up victims. But with so many road accidents, he asked when we had seen a helicopter land on the road.
Dr. Zdravkov showed a map prepared based on statistics from the Ministry of Interior for road accidents outside populated areas, where one or more than one person was injured. This is a total of over 2,000 people for 2025 and, according to him, there is not a single helicopter mission for such an incident.
“The emergency medicine standard stipulates that in every incident where there are three critical or six second category of emergency, or over 10 injured, the helicopter should go to the scene. Do you know of such a case?, he asked.
Dr. Blagomir Zdravkov called for clear organization and adequate management of this process.