Lifesaving devices in seven Dales villages will be a lasting legacy for a charity which ensured victims of serious accidents or illnesses in the countryside received potentially crucial speedy treatment, as Andrew Hitchon reports.

IT WAS a picture in the Craven Herald that helped to set things going.

The image was of a fundraising jumble sale on the ramp of what was then the ambulance station in Grassington. After it appeared in the paper people started stopping village doctor Ian Kinnish in the street and asking him: "What's all this about an Upper Wharfedale Immediate Care Scheme?"

So the GP explained the idea which had first been drawn up one evening in the early 1980s in the village's Black Horse pub between himself and local ambulance workers Brian Robertshaw, Glen Berry and the late David Rhodes; to ensure people who had suffered serious accidents or illnesses in the Dales could receive immediate attention in the critical early stages so they had a better chance of surviving and, hopefully, making a good recovery.

The idea quickly took off, as local people took the scheme to their hearts, raising a total of £250,000 over the years, which bought medical equipment and, eventually, specialist four-wheel-drive vehicles to carry it.

This allowed Dr Kinnish and later fellow Grassington GP Andrew Jackson, plus their ambulance colleagues, to get quickly to the scene of an incident and provide treatment in the critical early stages which could prove crucial to patients because of the time and distance involved at the time in getting people from remote rural areas to a hospital.

The scheme was particularly vital because when it started there were relatively few paramedics around with the skills to stabilise patients' conditions before they were taken away in an ambulance.

Dr Kinnish, who is now retired, had known of a similar scheme near the A1 corridor in North Yorkshire, which was possibly the first of its kind in England.

He had always been interested in emergency medicine and the prospect of being called out at all hours to anything from a cave rescue to a car overturned in a ditch did not daunt him. "You went to medical school knowing that when you qualified you were going to be on call a hell of a lot," he said. Indeed, being asked during a caving incident to treat a patient who was not only underground but underwater prompted him to take up potholing himself.

The scheme averaged ten to 12 serious, life-threatening incidents a year, and in most cases members felt they had made a positive difference. In once case they were called to a motorcycle accident where the rider had suffered a broken back and his pillion passenger had very severe abdominal injuries.

They managed to stabilise the two at the scene before ambulances took them to hospital. Both made full recoveries, but Dr Kinnish he said without the early intervention the rider would probably have ended up in a wheelchair and the passenger might easily have died.

"It was often very challenging and very rewarding, when against the odds we got a success," he said.

He paid tribute to the three men who joined him to start the scheme, saying: "I couldn't have been with three better and more enthusiastic people than the three ambulance lads, we were a really good team."

Mr Robertshaw said: "I can't tell you how well served the dale was at that time because there was virtually nothing else like it. There were several occasions over the years where lives have been saved."

Local fundraising was crucial for buying the necessary equipment. "The biggest things were the cars, the equipment and our own radio system," he said.

"We were very, very lucky that we had good GPs who ran it. It was excellent."

However, changes to GPs' contracts and many more people training as paramedics meant the scheme's importance began to diminish, and its remaining trustees, including Dr Kinnish, Mr Robertshaw and local solicitor John Spencer, had to decide what to do with the remainder of the money Dales people had raised.

Mr Robertshaw, who has also been the treasurer of the scheme, explained it had been dormant for some time, but if it was wound down there was a possibility under charity rules that the remaining money - over £10,000 - could be moved to a similar scheme in another part of the country.

"I just thought that it would be a shame if we were sitting here with £10,000 and a bit left and they move it somewhere else and it's all been raised in Wharfedale," he said.

"So I approached Ian Kinnish and John Spencer and said: 'What about buying some defibrillators?', which is how we arrived at this."

Seven defibrillators, devices which can be used to quickly treat heart attack victims, have been provided for Burnsall, Grassington, Halton Gill, Hebden, Kettlewell, Linton and Threshfield using cash left in the coffers of the scheme - a fitting end to a truly popular Dales initiative.