LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. –
Editor's Note: Elements of this article have been localized for the Joint Base Langley-Eustis audience. To view the original article by Defense Media Activity-San Antonio, click here.
Airmen from an Air Force Expeditionary Medical Support team along with members of the Chilean army built a mobile hospital in Angol, Chile, March 10-12 to help augment medical services for nearly 110,000 Chileans in the region.
Dr. (Maj.) James Dahle, 633d Medical Operations Squadron emergency physician, was among approximately 60 medical Airmen to work alongside local Chilean medics to provide support to meet the daily medical needs of the local community in this mobile facility.
"I was impressed when we were met with a luxury tourist bus at the airport and met with a warm meal upon our arrival at the base - even at 1 a.m.," Dahle said. "The Chileans are very friendly, very intelligent and very thankful for our assistance."
The EMEDS team is equipped and staffed to provide surgical, primary care, pediatric, radiological, gynecological, laboratory and pharmaceutical services.
The local hospital in Angol, a city southeast of Conception, Chile, was deemed structurally unsound as a result of an 8.8-magnitude earthquake Feb. 27. With the nearest operation ward more than 40 miles away, and many other local hospitals overwhelmed with casualties following the earthquake, local Chilean officials requested assistance from U.S. forces to help with primary care capabilities.
"The most important things in a humanitarian mission are to ascertain what the people need and want and then provide it and ensure that they have some buy-in to it, so they will maintain the advances we provide during our short time here," Dahle said. "The Chileans have made several adaptations to our technology to improve the facility."
According to Dahle, some of the advances the Chileans made to the facility is city water and electricity connections to the tents, a wooden floor in the operating room, and street lights and a gravel parking lot around the facility.
"This EMEDS system is a very light, very durable, very fast-assembled medical field hospital," said Lt. Col. Christopher Morgan, the deputy commander of the EMEDS team supporting the Chilean earthquake relief effort. "It is also one of the quickest moved. You could move a whole hospital on about one or two C-17 (Globemaster IIIs), which allows Airmen to move in quickly, set up and provide care."
Prior to the creation of the EMEDS hospital, Colonel Morgan said, it would take three to four times the airlift to move an air transportable hospital. EMEDS provides a lot of the same capability with a lot smaller footprint.
An EMEDS team was requested because they could be here in a matter of days, said Chilean army Lt. Col. Guillermo Uslar, the coordinator of the Chilean health service in Angol.
"To replace the hospital torn down by the earthquake could take up to three years," he said. "This facility is the best way to solve the immediate problem."
This medical facility will provide much needed space to provide medical care for the local community. The hospital includes several tents for care, including an emergency room and an operating room. The Air Force expeditionary medical team will provide assistance in the hospital as long as support is requested by local officials.
"It has been a wonderful experience to partner with the Chilean army to put together this expanded and modified EMEDS facility," Dahle said. "This deployment has taught me patience, a commitment to Air Force core values and flexibility."
U.S. military relief activities in Chile are part of the ongoing U.S. relief efforts led by U.S. Agency for International Development's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance officials.