Written on January 17, 2010 at 7:38 am by

DoDLive Blogger’s Roundtable: USAF Medics Face Challenges in Haiti Aid

Filed under Bloggers Roundtable, Operation Unified Response-Haiti {no comments}

By Ian Graham

The military has a well-known knack for building modern facilities in remote locations to support servicemembers. In the wake of disasters like this week’s earthquake in the Caribbean, the services have stepped up to use their deployable assets, especially hospitals, to help Haitians.

Col. Mark Mavity, chief of medical readiness for the Air Force surgeon general, discussed the Air Force Medical Service’s deployable capabilities and how they can use them to help the people of Haiti in a Jan. 16 DoDLive Blogger’s Roundtable.

The primary capabilities the Air Force is concerned with in Haiti, Mavity said, are primary and preventative care, surgical capability and some intensive holding capacity.  The footprint is small, he said, with at most perhaps 25 beds available – the idea, he said, is to get the patients stable enough to be moved to a location they can be better treated.

Mavity said though eight of Haiti’s hospitals were damaged to the point of inoperability, the majority of their medical facilities are up and running, though they’re strained by the volume of injuries that need to be treated.

“The capabilities of those facilities, even before the earthquake, were very limited in their capacity – both in size and in availability of equipment and medications,” he said. “[Now] they’re being overwhelmed by the demand.”

Joining us on the call were Clyde Middleton, www.patriotroom.com; Andrew Lubin, http://theobserver.org; Chuck Simmins, www.northshorejournal.org; Paul McLeary, www.aviationweek.com; Grim, www.blackfive.net; Scott Murphy, www.whatthewhonow.com; and U.S. Air Force Public Affairs Agency.

To listen to the interview, click here.

For more, read the Defense.gov story.

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