Medics come through final test for Helmand

BRITAIN’S senior sailor – First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope – watches medics deal with a casualty in the back of Chinook.

Mercifully this is just an exercise, but within days the men and women of the Joint Force Medical Group will be doing this for real in support of Royal Marines – and Allied forces on the ground in Helmand.

More than 300 medical and logistical personnel from all three Services, drawn from 61 units – both regulars and reservists – converged on the Army Medical Services Training Centre at Strensall, near York, for a week-long final exercise before deploying.

That exercise saw three days of bespoke training followed by a three-day dynamic test in a similar working environment to that of Helmand –

minus the heat and dust which Yorkshire cannot replicate in April (or any other month for that matter…).

The trial – a final validation to determine whether the group is ready for the rigours of the front line – was played out in real time and witnessed everything medics will have to do in Helmand.

That meant the Medical Emergency Response Teams treating a casualty at the scene of an incident, surgeons conducting operations in theatres and the biomedical scientists sorting out the blood for any transfers.

Once the ‘operations’ had been completed and the ‘patients’ were coming round, ward nurses conducted the aftercare and the Aero Medical Evacuation Team and Critical Care Air Support Team Processed Personnel sorted out flying the casualties from the field hospital back to the UK for further specialist treatment and rehabilitation – exactly as it’s played out for real.

As well as the Britons being put through their paces, there were also military medics from the Estonian Armed Forces. A surgical team from the Baltic nation, plus 46 personnel from the US Navy Medical Corps, are deploying to Afghanistan as part of the UK’s Joint Force Medical Group.

Admiral Stanhope witnessed the final day of the exercise and was joined by the Director of the RN Medical Service, Surg Cdre Noel Bevan.

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