The Russian Ministry of Health is set to extend the state-sponsored HEMS programme until 2025 while gradually expanding its scope to cover the entire territory of the huge country.
This will be achieved thanks to the funding of RUB 14 billion (equating to about $211 million), slated to be allocated from the Russian state budget over the next three years.
According to Mikhail Lyamzin, HEMS project development administrator at the Ministry of Health, the number of regions covered by the programme will increase from 34 in 2018 to 49 in 2019, while for 2020 a further increase is eyed to 70 regions, and in 2021 the entire territory of the Russian Federation will be covered.
The state-sponsored HEMS programme was given a go-ahead in 2017, at the time provided only to remote regions of Russia with underdeveloped road networks. The local governments’ contract civil helicopter operators to provide HEMS by using newly-built helicopters leased from the Russian state-owned leasing company GTLK.
The annual funding for the services by the Russian state budget in 2017 and 2018 was RUB 3.3 billion, in 2019 it is set to increase to RUB 4.6 billion, in 2020 to RUB 4.8 billion while in 2021 the figure will exceed RUB 5 billion.
Lyamzin said that between 1 May 2017 and 1 November 2018, the HEMS project saw the new helicopters amassing 6,100 sorties to transport 8,500 patients.
The first order for HEMS-equipped helicopters to be used in the Ministry of Health’s newly-launched initiative was placed by GTLK in November 2016 and comprised 29 aircraft, including 13 Mi-8AMTs built at the Ulan-Ude Aviation Plant (U-UAP) plus ten more Mi-8MTV-1s and six Ansats built at Kazan Helicopters.
The contract for the entire package was priced at RUB 9.4 billion (equating at the time to about $152 million) and all of these helicopters were delivered to Russian commercial operators until the end of 2017.
The second GTLK order for 31 rotorcraft, to be used in the Ministry of Health initiative, was placed in December 2017. It included 13 Mi-8AMTs, six Mi-8MTV- 1s and 12 Ansats. The total price for 12 Ansats was set at RUB 2.664 billion, while that for 19 Mi-8AMT/MTV-1s was set at RUB 7.420 billion.
All of these helicopters are expected to be delivered to Russian commercial operators until the end of 2018. For 2019 and 2020, GTLK plans delivery of 24 more Mi-8AMT/MTV-1s and seven Ansats, but no firm order has been placed yet.
The government-subsidised financial leasing arrangement between GTLK and the civil rotorcraft operators comes with a ten-year payment term at a very low interest rate. Ansat’s monthly lease rental rate over a period of 120 months amounts to RUB 2.3 million when leased out without advance payments. Under the same leasing terms and conditions, GTLK offers the Mi-8AMT/MTV-1 at a monthly rental rate of RUB 3.3 million.
