$58 million boost to ADF health

Good medicine: Funding boost will provide significant health benefits.

By Pte John Wellfare

THE latest phase in a 15-year procurement plan has recently been approved by Government and will provide a $58 million boost to the ADF’s deployable health capability.

Phase 2B of JP2060, the project that has been directing Defence’s medical upgrades since 1996, is expected to keep the ADF health capability at the forefront of the world’s militaries, with planned purchases including AME equipment, imaging systems, monitoring instruments, forensic dentistry tools and logistics capabilities.

Director of Health Capability Development Gp-Capt Geoff Robinson, said the equipment to be purchased under Phase 2B would enhance deployable health capabilities and in some cases create whole new ones.

“We’ll be able to have a deployable forensic dentistry suite, for instance,” he said.

“Class Eight or pharmacy supplies and blood – that will give us the ability to transport blood around the world.

“Our AME equipment is a particularly important one. We’ll be able to upgrade our equipment to allow us to carry the very critically ill patients we saw coming out of Bali and out of the tsunami.

“There are certainly a whole range of items that we’ll look at procuring.

“Now, we haven’t done the procuring, we haven’t done the tendering for that equipment yet.

“The DMO project office will look at various suppliers and various types of capability and then request for tenders and so on.

“What we’ll be able to input to that is getting the best bang for buck, basically, and getting the latest equipment to enhance or upgrade what we already have.”

Equipment purchases needed to be backed up with good staff and the right skills, Gp-Capt Robinson said.

“While the $58 million doesn’t go toward training as such, we have to make sure we parallel new equipment and the new capability with training,” he said. “So it’s also part of our job to make sure that training is always complementary to the equipment as well.”

Director General DHS Air-Cdre Tony Austin said ADF health specialists would be better equipped to support military activities and provide disaster relief after Phase 2B had been implemented.

“It will make a significant difference to our ability to rapidly deploy health people in an austere environment,” he said. “There’s no question it will enhance our medical capability.

“While the focus of our health service is always on providing a fit fighting force, treating battle casualties and maximising the operational capability, we have the skills and we have the equipment to be able to operate in many other spaces, such as responding to man-made disasters, natural disasters, peacekeeping and peacemaking operations.

“For the men and women of the ADF, when they deploy operationally, the goal of the Defence Health Service is to give them a standard of care commensurate with that which they’d get on civvy street. We want to make sure that they’re not treated as second-class citizens and that our people and our equipment is the best available.

“Our people did a fantastic job in Aceh, but this [equipment upgrade] will make it so that they can do it even better.”

Medical equipment procured under the earlier Phase 2A of JP2060, which includes medium-fidelity mannequins and a portable ultrasound capability, is due to enter service in the near future.