The device, fundamental to rescue missions during the COVID pandemic, becomes part of the exhibits at the Vigna di Valle Historical Museum
The ATI (Aircraft Transit Isolator) stretcher, the special device that the Italian Air Force used on board aircraft and helicopters to transport and save the lives of hundreds of citizens during the Covid pandemic, is from today included in the exhibition itinerary of the Vigna di Valle Historical Museum, guardian of the aircraft and main works of aeronautical engineering that have characterised the progress of the Armed Force.
Precisely five years after the pandemic, an emergency that has left its mark on world history, the event thus adds another important page to the story of the first hundred years of the Italian Air Force. The stretcher handover ceremony was held this morning in Vigna di Valle, in the presence of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Lieutenant General Aurelio Colagrande, alongside Armed Forces authorities, experts, and figures from the scientific and academic healthcare communities.
The ceremony provided an opportunity for industry experts, from both civilian healthcare and the Italian Air Force Medical Service, to highlight this unique capability of Italian excellence and explain how Italy has become one of the first, and still remains among the few nations in the world at the forefront of this sector. In particular, Air Force medical officers discussed in detail the phases which, as early as the 2000s, led to the creation of this highly specialised unit—known since 2011 as the Air Force Bio-containment Group—an entity that over time has also become a benchmark for training civilians and foreign armed forces.
“Biocontainment – recalled Lieutenant Colonel Alessandro Fiorini, Director of the Pratica di Mare Principal Infirmary – Italian Air Force Biocontainment Group – is an investment made by the Air Force at the beginning of this century, an important capability now at the service of the country, the result of a path born from the tactical need to support at any time, 24 hours a day, a patient suffering from infectious diseases who requires air transport. An important training path by our team and which today goes down in history thanks to this event, which allows us to highlight how virtuous it was to invest in the deployable health capability, strategic for the country, and to invest in the human resource, the healthcare personnel. The beginning – he added – took place on single transports, both of patients suffering from tuberculosis, suspected haemorrhagic fevers and haemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola in 2014. Covid found us ready for this challenge.
During the conference that preceded the ceremony, an update was also given on highly topical and interesting issues such as those related to the capacity for prevention and management of epidemiological emergencies.
“This stretcher, which we used even before Covid,” stated Emanuele Nicastri, director of the High-Infectious Disease Unit at the IRCCS INMI Lazzaro Spallanzani in Rome, "is a metaphor for the Italian response to epidemics, which have always shaped human history. We will have other epidemics in the future; we must not hide from that. The important thing is to make sure we are ready as a nation. And the ATI stretcher is the emblem of this ability to network, because it makes it possible to transport critical, severe patients safely for both the operator and the patient themselves on airplanes or helicopters.".
The ATI (Aircraft Transit Isolator) stretcher is a high-biocontainment in-flight transport technology that the Italian Air Force acquired thanks to trials launched in the early 2000s. Used for the first time in 2006 on a C-130J aircraft, it subsequently proved essential for transporting Italian nationals suffering from the Ebola virus on a KC-767 aircraft, and during the COVID-19 pandemic it played a crucial role in managing the high number of cases by being deployed for the first time on HH-101A helicopters as well.