HUANCAVELICA, PERU –
An 11-year high school physics and chemistry teacher was struck by a second calling about nine years ago: to serve his country as a U.S. Air Force physician.
He set out to become an obstetrician/gynecologist through the Health Professions Scholarship Program, always with the goal in mind of one day serving those in need, at home and abroad. He envisioned using his knowledge and compassion to make a difference in the lives of others on a global scale.
The past two weeks of his Air Force career have been the experience he had been dreaming of when he first decided to change paths nearly a decade ago.
Today, Capt. James Small wakes up in the remote, mountainous region of Huancavelica, Peru, energized to start a full day of patient care in his new office: an Emergency Medical Support Health Response Team mobile hospital set up in a soccer field nearly 13,500 feet above sea level.
It's winter and the air is frigid. Yet, when Small arrives at work, lines of people have been waiting since the early morning hours to receive specialized medical care from him and about 40 of his colleagues deployed from the 633rd Medical Group, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va.
In cooperation with the Peruvian government, three weeks ago truckloads of pallets traveled more than 11 hours up winding mountain roads to a dirt soccer field in Huancavelica, where the U.S. Air Force team and Peruvian soldiers unloaded the trucks. The U.S. and Peruvian service members worked for nearly 24 hours to unpack the boxes and assemble their contents into a 22-room, 6,300 square-foot, network of medical tents that comprise the EMEDS HRT hospital.
"I was absolutely blown away--it was so impressive--from the moment we reached the compound and we saw the network of tents that were set up," says Maj. Gen. Mark Sears, U.S. Southern Command's deputy commander for mobilization and reserve affairs, who visited the EMEDS HRT site. "And to think of the incredible logistics of how it had to be moved in and set up; then we got inside and saw all of the activities that were going on and the people that they were treating. It was absolutely phenomenal."
The EMEDS HRT is deployed here as part of New Horizons, a U.S. Southern Command-sponsored annual joint and combined training and humanitarian assistance exercise that takes place in Latin American and Caribbean countries.
In preparation to deploy as part of New Horizons Peru 2012, the EMEDS HRT trained and worked together for about six months. They rehearsed how the EMEDS would be assembled, who would work where and how patients would flow in and out of the facility.
This deployment experience has brought them together as a team, Small says.
"We've pulled together, we've bonded, and we've gotten to know one another," he says. "This experience will make us a better hospital back at home station and prepare us to deploy in future contingencies."
The EMEDS HRT is comprised of a variety of light and lean modular, rapid response medical packages that can be used in a myriad of operations such as humanitarian relief, wartime contingencies and disaster response.
The life-saving benefits of the EMEDS have been tested before in Latin America and the Caribbean. A similar EMEDS HRT was field-tested in Trinidad and Tobago during another U.S. Southern Command-sponsored exercise, Fuerzas Alliadas Humanitarias in April 2011, and in March 2010, an EMEDS deployed to Chile following as part of a disaster relief mission.
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, 2010. 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.
About 60 Air Force medical personnel responded to the call for help and set up an EMEDS facility in Angol, Chile. The Air Force medics worked alongside Chilean medical personnel from the local hospital to meet the daily medical needs of the local community out of the mobile facility. That EMEDS team was equipped and staffed to provide surgical, primary care, pediatric, radiological, gynecological, laboratory and pharmaceutical services.
In two weeks of patient care, U.S. Air Force and Chilean medical personnel worked side-by-side to attend to more than 300 patients and performed about 40 surgeries, and gave back Chilean physicians 60 percent of the bed space lost as a result of the earthquake.
Some Airmen who deploy on these types of EMEDS missions consistently report that the ability to go quickly to help those in need is something they'll remember for the long-term.
"It has been a very rewarding experience," said Senior Airman Amber Olszen, an aerospace medical technician who deployed to Chile from the 81st Surgical Inpatient Squadron at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss. "We built a hospital from scratch. It was hard work, but I would do it again in a heartbeat and the Chileans were very grateful for it."
The Airmen deployed to Peru as part of the New Horizons EMEDS HRT mission express a similar sentiment.
"I think it makes me a better person to see the world from a different perspective--it makes me a better doctor, gives me a compassion and understanding for the human side of medicine," Small says. "It gives me a renewed spirit for my role as a physician."
As the EMEDS HRT mobile hospital was finally set up in the soccer field in Huancavelica, Peru, a little more than two weeks ago, a buzz ignited in the community, and people began lining up for appointments to receive care in one of the five specialties the EMEDS HRT offers: pediatrics, internal medicine, family medicine, gynecology, and dental.
Small describes the Peruvians who gather to wait in the middle of the night in the freezing temperatures as "cheerful" and "truly grateful" for the opportunity to receive medical care as they make their way into his clinic.
"The patients have only met you for a minute, yet they fully give you their trust," Small says. "I've been reminded throughout this experience that there's a true element of trust that is the doctor-patient relationship."
The three-month New Horizons Peru activities will culminate in a disaster response subject matter expert exchange between U.S. and Peruvian first responders, where about 150 participants will practice responding to a simulated earthquake and an aircraft crash scenario.