Neill Newton: Neill Newton: Medical care that flies everywhere

Global Flying Hospitals (GFH) is a non-profit organisation which provides logistics support to the world’s humanitarian medical charities via flying hospitals, field clinics, and online medical e-learning.
Believed by some to be a revolutionary humanitarian medical charity, it was founded in 2001 by an Australian international business consultant, pilot and visionary. With a simple vision, to help provide medical care to people in developing countries worldwide, Neill Newton, founder and chairman of Global Flying Hospitals, chose Macau to set up the company’s international headquarters. Macau Daily Times spoke with him to learn more about GFH’s plans for Macau and the region.

MDTimes – Tell me a bit more about your vision, what made you create Global Flying Hospitals (GFH)?
Neill Newton – I’ve reached a point in my life, when I was about 50, a time when you burn out on doing things, because it’s always ‘you’ and ‘producing money’ and I wanted to try something that was a bit more meaningful on the planet and help people.

We see Macau as the centre of the world. When you see the world map, and you’re based here, you can fly direct to the US, Europe, Australia and for our purposes it’s much better.

I had an aviation background, I’ve been a pilot since about 1971, so I was trying to look for something I could do that also had aviation involvement. I saw this program on Discovery channel in America about these doctors who go from America to Vietnam and there are all these operations and I thought, I wonder if there’s a better way to get them facilities and it came to me that you could put a clinic or a hospital inside an airplane.
So I did some research and found out that there was already an organisation called Orbis (Orbis Eye Hospital), which is also in Macau, and they do specific eye operations. So I thought “this is doable” and because I had involvement with strategic planning, I started to think on a global basis how we could make this work.

MDTimes – and thus started Global Flying Hospitals?
Neill Newton - We formed Global Flying Hospitals from that point and that became the building block. We started to do things just on our own–humanitarian charities and several missions.
Then came along 9/11 in America, and from that point to this point our planet has deteriorated pretty bad, and all these charities, trying to do this work throughout other countries but there is still 2 billion people–one third of our planet–without medical care.
About a year ago, we started to reposition and think of a better way to do all of this, rather than being in competition with everybody. So why can’t we support each other? So we decided to position GFH as the logistics resource for the other humanitarian charities. If they need field medical clinics, we’ll supply them; if they need a hospital, we’ll give it to them; if they need a modular-built field clinic that becomes permanent, we’ll build it for them.
We created all this range of equipment, from the flying hospital to the Hercules cargo planes, with inflatable medical clinics, to modular clinics that are going to be built in Malaysia, right down to the pieces of equipment.
By supplying other charities, this helps them to reach further and treat a lot more people with better equipment.

MDTimes – Why did you choose Macau as Global Flying Hospitals’ international headquarters?
Neill Newton – For about four years or maybe even longer, I’ve had my eye on Macau because realistically, most of the people in the world live in this region, so we wanted to be positioned here.
Some countries are a bit more difficult to establish in, with a lot more rules and regulations. Hong Kong would be prohibitive expense-wise, so we thought that Macau would be a perfect place.
In the Macau airport–they have a few rules and regulations and we have to clear this with them because we haven’t had our meetings with them–they have some rules stating that humanitarian aircrafts can land and park there for free, so we can use it as our operations hub.
So we can reach Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, the Philippines, all from this area really well. But we wanted more than just an operations hub, we wanted a head office for Asia, so we could control fund raising in Singapore, Japan and South Korea.
We’ll start the office with three foreigners, including myself, but then employ Macau residents to help us with the operation.
We see Macau as the centre of the world. When you see the world map, and you’re based here, you can fly direct to the US, Europe, Australia and for our purposes it’s much better. If we were based in America, every time we went on a mission, we’d have to cross the Atlantic or the Pacific and a huge fuel bill would come up.
We’ve got big plans for Macau. First of all, we only want to hire local residents and we have been getting a lot of media coverage, mostly in international medical journals.

In Vietnam, you have around 135,000 kids who need cleft palate reconstruction and these poor kids are kept in their house because it’s considered a ‘horror thing’ for the family–so they need a lot of attention.

So, when we announce that we are establishing here in Macau, the international media spotlight will be on Macau asking why we chose this place to set up our office.
Because Orbis, Oxfam and UNICEF are all here, we would like to create alliances with them, by offering our equipment and so forth, and develop Macau also as a humanitarian hub, thus reaching other markets that Macau wouldn’t normally reach–aviation people, doctors and corporate sponsors.

MDTimes – How do you manage the funding for such a large scale international operation?
Neill Newton – It’s a huge, huge, huge goal. We haven’t yet built all this equipment and for the first few years it was myself and my directors funding this. Every penny I ever made with my books and seminars would go into this. We were self funded.
Now, we’ve caught the eye of corporate sponsors who are coming on board with us on this and the funds come from them.
We are also putting in place other fund raising or charitable giving initiatives to help because we just can’t do it ourselves.
We just had a pledge coming in just a few days ago from a very wealthy tycoon from the States and that will give us enough money to put together big pieces of the fleet.
The United Nations Humanitarian Disaster Fund is taking notice of us, so as we grow like a snowball effect, we are getting a lot of attention.

MDTimes – Expectations regarding local companies and their role in providing funds for your humanitarian operation...
Neill Newton – We would definitely like to work with them if they want to because it adds a new element to them. Nowadays, companies, especially in the United States and in Europe, are very interested in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). I don’t think it’s so strong out here but it’s starting to take shape.
If customers see a company that’s supporting some sort of humanitarian effort, they will buy more from them, because in their point of view, they see them as a preferred choice.
Macau is not like Hong Kong where there’s a lot of charitable giving. It’s a different mindset here, so we won’t be going around with a can. We’re more likely to stage other type of fund raising to appeal to a different mindset.

MDTimes – Which countries/regions are in need and would benefit from your operation?
Neill Newton – In Vietnam, you have around 135,000 kids who need cleft palate reconstruction and these poor kids are kept in their house because it’s considered a ‘horror thing’ for the family–so they need a lot of attention.
In Nepal, where our last mission took place, we did cataract surgery with six Australian eye surgeons. They looked at 1,000 people but they operated on 323.
In the Philippines, they have an awful lot of tumors that need attention, so we want to put all our efforts into helping those people.

MDTimes – But will you also focus on China?
Neill Newton - I have a very strong love for China. I’ve lived in the northeast of China and I study Mandarin every day. There’s some big needs in China and if we are here, it’s a doorway into China and we would definitely like to offer our equipment, our services and our expertise to anything that happens over there, such as disaster relief and also just general practice cataract surgery and others.
We are negotiating with some charities at the moment to see if we can create an alliance first. I think if we can get permission, we can do a lot of good there.

MDTimes - How many people have you helped over the years and what’s the goal for the next 5 to 10 years?
Neill Newton - I don’t think we’ve done anymore than 10,000 but our true goal is to reach five million people, if possible and if we align with the right charities.
One of the initiatives that we have started is an online medical procedures portal. This is designed to show medical professionals from Western countries showing how to do procedures, whether it’s cataracts, cleft palate and so on.

There’s some big needs in China and if we are here, it’s a doorway into China and we would definitely like to offer our equipment, our services and our expertise to anything that happens over there, such as disaster relief and also just general practice cataract surgery and others.

We’ve been talking to some of the medical academies and they have been saying they would like to put on their material, we’ve got some of the eye surgeons doing videos for us, of their procedures, so we will upload all of this so that some guy that doesn’t know the latest technique can go on and view, and learn from that point.
This is a big initiative and we are looking for people to help us build that web portal, which should be a major thing around the world.
For too many years it’s been “them and us” but doctors, we should all be sharing and helping because if we had a very healthy planet and people in Africa or Vietnam or wherever were as healthy and functioning as everyone else, then we wouldn’t be in all these dire straits like terrorism and all the stuff that goes on because of the disenchanted people of the world.