Truth about your chances of surviving if you fall ill on a plane: A thousand people a year die due to medical emergencies on flights - and you might be alarmed at how little medical training most cabin crew have...

Truth about your chances of surviving if you fall ill on a plane: A thousand people a year die due to medical emergencies on flights - and you might be alarmed at how little medical training most cabin crew have...

By ERIN DEAN Published: 20:29 EST, 11 November 2024 | Updated: 20:30 EST, 11 November 2024 e-mail View comments Exhausted after a night shift on a busy hospital ward, Dr Vishwaraj Vemala fell asleep almost as soon as he boarded his flight to India , only to be nudged awake by his mother a few hours later telling him there was 'a problem'. As he woke up, Dr Vemala, a liver specialist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham , spotted a fellow passenger, sweating profusely, rush to the back of the plane where he then fell forward into the arms of a member of the cabin crew. Dr Vemala jumped up to help but the initial signs did not look good.

'I checked his pulse but there was none, and I realised he'd had a cardiac arrest,' says Dr Vemala. This would be a medical emergency wherever it occurred, but at 35,000ft and hours away from an airport it was especially difficult. We've all seen it in films, and some will have witnessed it first-hand.

.. that moment during a flight when the call goes up: 'If there is a medical professional on board can they make themselves known to the cabin crew' Dr Vemala shouted for the crew to bring the plane's medical kit and defibrillator.

He needed to shock the man's heart to get it pumping again. Even for Dr Vemala it was a challenging situ.