In Reply to: air force rescue posted by mick on Thursday, 31. January 2002 at 16:53 Bali Time:
here is a news article i was just reading about this subject...
Baby on emergency flight back to Sydney
6:45 AM February 1
A critically ill baby boy is expected to arrive in Sydney this morning after an RAAF Hercules made a mercy dash to Bali.
The four-day-old is fighting for his life after being born with lung problems to Adelaide parents on the Indonesian island.
A team of doctors from the NSW Newborn and Paediatric Emergency Transport Service (NETS) have flown to Bali from Sydney's Richmond Air Base to bring the baby to Sydney for surgery.
The Hercules was expected to land at Sydney Airport at 6am (AEDT), a NETS spokeswoman told AAP on Thursday night.
She said the baby was in a serious but stable condition.
"He's not on a life support system at this stage (but) our team is prepared ... if they need to do that inflight they can," she said.
"They stabilised the baby and transferred him over to our monitoring and our equipment until he was in a reasonable condition to fly."
NETS was only informed of the baby's condition at 10pm (AEDT) on Thursday and had worked through the night to arrange use of the RAAF Hercules plane for the rescue.
The baby's mother was believed to have spent most of her pregnancy in Adelaide but returned to her homeland in Bali to deliver the baby close to her family, NETS state director Andrew Berry said earlier.
The spokeswoman said the baby could not have been operated on in Bali.
"(The baby's) condition is reparable surgically but there was not the expertise and the surgical status to be able to do that in Bali," she said.
"That's why we needed to airlift this infant to Australia."
The baby's parents, who are travelling with the baby to Sydney, told doctors they were happy to be coming home, she said.
A special NETS ambulance would be on hand at Sydney Airport to transport the baby to the Westmead Children's Hospital where he will undergo surgery.
Dr Berry said the flight was being funded by federal and state governments and there would be no cost to the parents.