READY FOR TODAY – EVOLVING FOR TOMORROW
Members of the Canadian Armed Forces medical team review video of the next stage of training during Operation SIRONA (Canadian contribution to the Ebola
outbreak in West Africa) pre-deployment training with their British counterparts at the Army Medical Services Training Centre in Strensall, UK, Dec. 11, 2014..
at the Mozambique floods in 2000 where
the military controlled all rotary wing
assets, which was the only way of getting
aid to isolated communities. If, therefore,
‘Coordinate’ is going to be a challenge,
only ‘Cooperation’ is left as the ‘C’ word
that we will be able to agree on and make
a start on practises and procedures. It
will, however, be a start.
This is still very early on in this work
strand. Early meetings have been very
much conversational and will serve to
get stakeholders into the same room
and build trust. Only then will substantive
negotiations be able to begin and
develop. While personality should not
be a constraint to transform something
that needs to be changed, within the
civil/military setting, personality is
everything. After years of slowly moving
towards closer working with the military,
a high profile NGO is now moving in the
opposite direction following a significant
change of personalities in its executive
management.
with this organisation in Sierra Leone
was very fruitful, getting the commercial
sector to join in the ARRC Article 5
Outreach Group has not been possible.
The reasons are not clear although it
has been speculated that outreach and
contact groups do not generate contracts
and so are seen as low priority activities.
Key Considerations
• Displaced
civilian populations will
inevitably seek medical care at
deployed military medical treatment
facilities. This will have an impact on
the operational patient care pathway.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Colonel Jeremy Tuck is an officer with
the British Army’s Royal Army Medical
Corps and is a consultant in public
health medicine and a former general
practitioner. He currently serves as the
ARRC’s medical director. Col. Tuck
has extensive operational experience
in clinical delivery, command and staff
roles, and has worked at every level
from the tactical front line to operational
2- and 3-star level headquarters, as well
as on the strategic stage at Ministry and
international levels.
• MROE will not take precedence over
a clinician’s moral and ethical duty to
treat all casualties on the basis of need
alone.
• Most agree that a close civil/military
working relationship is not only
necessary, but inevitable; to start
working on this when the first close
battles have started will be too late.
While the government and charity
sectors have a history of being able
to work together, the new arrival of
the commercial sector will add a new
dynamic. The appearance of the
commercial sector during Operation
GRITROCK (the Ebola crisis response in
Sierra Leone) saw the rapid deployment
of a highly capable organisation.
However, while the working relationship
ALLIED RAPID REACTION CORPS
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