Children's Emergency is a British television documentary series. It follows the Children's Acute Transport Service (abbreviated as CATS),[1] the intensive care retrieval service connected to the nationally acclaimed Great Ormond Street Hospital in London,[2] which is dedicated to stabilising and transporting critically ill children from peripheral hospitals to specialist paediatric intensive care units.[3]

Children's Emergency
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of series1
No. of episodes8
Production
Executive producerShaun Gilmartin
ProducerHelen White
Running time30 minutes
Production companySeptember Films
Original release
NetworkBBC One
Release4 May (2010-05-04) –
23 June 2010 (2010-06-23)

Eight episodes[4] were produced by September Films for the BBC, and it was first aired on BBC One between 4 May and 23 June 2010.

In the first episode CATS make a 100-mile blue light dash so a newborn baby boy can have emergency heart surgery; a little girl with suspected meningitis is rushed from her local hospital in Southend to St Mary's in Paddington for intensive care; and an eleven-year-old boy in Romford is having mystery fits and needs specialist care to keep him alive while they try to discover what is causing his illness.[5]

In the subsequent seven episodes the CATS team is being called to various locations in Great Britain, using specially fitted ambulances with full intensive care equipment, RAF helicopters and Hercules aircraft to reach even the remotest cases and transfer them to London to get the urgently needed specialist care and therapies they need.

The documentary depicts the life-saving work of the medics with real live footage, as they deal with a wide range of critical conditions in their little patients, such as brain infections, lung and heart failure, car accidents, blocked intestines and diabetes with coma.

The specialist medical staff of the Children's Acute Transport Service who is starring in the television series include amongst others Dr Christian Pathak,[6] a prominent, internationally operating Paediatric Emergency Physician, who amongst other organizations has also worked extensively with the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia.[7]

References edit

  1. ^ [1] "Children's Acute Transport Service" at National Health Service UK.
  2. ^ [2] "Britain's best hospitals" at The Independent.
  3. ^ [3] "Children's Emergency – On the Road with the Children's Acute Transport Service" at Twins Club.
  4. ^ [4] "Episodes Guide Children's Emergency" at BBC ONE.
  5. ^ [5] "Children's Emergency – The first episode.
  6. ^ [6] "Dr Pathak in the BBC Documentary Children's Emergency" at BBC ONE.
  7. ^ [7] "Rote Erde, unendlich blauer Himmel und Abenteurer in Schweizer Flugzeugen" at FOKUS Magazin.

External links edit