By 
A CHARITY collection at Christmas time, which was well-received by kind-hearted Tyrone folk, has enabled the Omagh Rotary Club to raise more than £2,000 for Air Ambulance NI.
At a recent lunch meeting of the club in the Silverbirch Hotel, Omagh, the group presented a cheque for £2,500 to Damien McAnespie, fundraising manager for Tyrone and Fermanagh for the registered charity.
Air Ambulance NI operates a helicopter emergency medical service dedicated to responding to serious trauma and medical emergencies in Northern Ireland.
The money was raised by the club at its pre-Christmas Tree of Remembrance collection over two days at an Omagh supermarket.
Mr McAnespie thanked the club for its ‘tremendous support’ and told how the air ambulance with a doctor and paramedic on board helps ‘bring the hospital’ to a patient in need in a short space of time.
During the meeting, the Rotary club meeting also heard that there had been over 4,500 taskings in Northern Ireland for the air ambulance from July 2014 to September 2024 which equates to 12 per week.
Each day costs £6,850 or £2.8 million annually to operate the service.
Immediate past president of Omagh Rotary Club, Hugh Gibson, who presided at the meeting, said the operating costs of the air ambulance is not supported by government funding and so relies very much on donations from the public.
“To support the worthy charity you could run the Belfast City Marathon in May, abseil down the Europa Hotel in the summer or like ourselves, as a club, collect from the generous public as we did pre-Christmas,” added Mr Gibson.