KAMPOT PROVINCE, Cambodia --
Medical professionals from the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, Australian Defense Forces, Royal Cambodian Armed Forces and the Kampot Provincial Hospital and Health Clinic kicked off Pacific Angel 16-2 with a subject matter expert exchange here June 6-10.
The multilateral exchange consisted of a public health emergency course focused on humanitarian assistance and disaster response.
“The intent of this course is how to deal with a displaced population following a natural disaster,” said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Timothy Ballard, a Preventive Medicine Physician at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and lead for the Defense Institute for Medical Operations outreach team. “We’re putting the participant nation in the position of managing their own population that has been displaced, and we start off with international standards from the United Nations and World Health Organization.”
The United Nations and World Health Organization’s standards aid in determining how much water, toilets and shelters are needed by the population and also the appropriate risks and medical threats, according to Ballard.
The DIMO team builds on lecture material that is presented at the beginning of the week where they introduced and discussed a variety of topics to include: triage of patients, medical management, public health, infectious diseases and how to control them, animals in disaster, epidemiology in disaster situations, and how to talk to the media and present correct information.
After the material is presented in lectures, the medical groups have to put their knowledge to action through simulated disaster response scenarios.
“We broke into different teams and ran through engagements and patients,” said Royal Australian Air Force Flight Lieutenant Karen McMahon, Environmental Health Officer, and one of the small group team leads. “Teams had to determine what the treatment for the patient would be, and if there are any outbreaks or any actions they had to conduct to control those outbreaks to minimize the number of patients.”
The week continued to build on the various scenarios, where groups were required to assess and treat simulated patients, and determine hospital and patient placement within their hospital camps. The amount of patients either increased or decreased depending on the situation and how the groups diagnosed and treated the simulated patients.
“Together we’re working through these solutions, and the Cambodians did exceptionally well,” said Ballard. “My personal group identified an early [simulated] influenza case, they did appropriate identification treatment and they did appropriate public health countermeasures.”
This exchange helps build partner capacity and bolsters each nation’s ability to work side-by-side, which is particularly important when faced with responding to a natural disaster.
“Working with both the USAF and the RCAF is really important for the interoperability of our nations so if we do need to work together in the future it assists in that,” said McMahon. “It also allows us to learn from them how they would act in situations which we may not be used to, and they can also learn from us how we would act in situations that they may not be used to.”
Events such as this aid in the Cambodian Armed Forces and the provincial hospital and health clinic staff in being better-prepared and able to care for citizens as well be as ready to overcome a natural disaster.
“This training was beneficial for me because I had never learned in this way before,” said Cambodian Maj. Lt. Kim Thou, a physician with the Cambodian Ministry of National Defense. “It is different in a natural disaster to know how to take the patient who has a serious disease and treat them correctly. We get to learn about how to help the people in emergency healthcare during a disaster.”
Pacific Angel 16-2 will continue through 13 June with health services outreach and renovation projects to be completed by medical professionals and civil engineers of the armed forces from the United States, Cambodia, Australia, Vietnam and Thailand in partnership with non-governmental organizations.
Multinational medical service providers will conduct general health, dental, optometry, pediatrics, physical therapy for Kampot residents at Por Thivong Primary School in Tuek Chhou district June 13-15, and at the Ang Chum Trapaing Chhuk Secondary School in Kampong Trach district June 16-18 in Kampot Province.
Pacific Angel is a humanitarian assistance and civil military operation mission that builds partner capacity through medical and health outreach, engineering civic projects and subject matter exchanges.