Det’s Fobbits fight injuries

Fobbits: Med Det members Capt David Robertson, Maj Ray Gilbert, Lt Debbie Dohnt, Lt-Col David Collins, Capt Kaylene Baird, LCpl Vasthi Henderson, Maj Ben Butson, WO2 Stewart Robertson and Flt-Lt Collette Richards.

Photo by Sqn-Ldr Paul Lineham.

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Medevac: Sgt Tarese Heath, AMD, operates the ventilator fitted to a wounded soldier as a US colleague tows the guerney to the Emergency Department of the USAF Theatre Hospital at Balad.

Photo by Maj Patricia Anderson, US Army.

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Little one: Sqn-Ldr Dianne Stephens with a small patient in the Emergency Department at Balad.

Photo By Maj John McPherson

By Lt-Col David Collins

THE second Australian Medical Detachment in Balad, Iraq has come home.

Arriving in Iraq in early March the Med Det, as it’s commonly called in Iraq, consisted of 20 ADF Health Service personnel from the Army and the RAAF serving as part of JFT 633.

The Med Det was located north of Baghdad in Balad, a short Black Hawk ride, but a world away in a bustling and heavily populated coalition logistics base.

Made up of both reserve and full time members the Det was embedded in the major coalition trauma facility in Iraq, the USAF Theatre Hospital (AFTH).

The AFTH acts as a trauma centre and is the main transit point for US personnel injured in Iraq as well as the Iraqi Security Force and Iraqi civilians.

The hospital is a busy facility and offers a range of medical services that are only available in large teaching hospitals. The amount of high tech medical hardware in use in a deployed field environment is quite amazing .But as one senior US Medical Officer said despite all that “it’s all about the people”.

The activity never stopped as the Med Det dealt with numerous trauma cases and multiple casualties. On its first day on duty the Det was involved with the treatment of 14 Iraqi civilians seriously injured by a vehicle-borne explosive device.

The Det’s main effort was the provision of intensive care nursing and medical officers.

Australian voices could be heard in all the AFTH departments. From the moment a casualty entered the resuscitation area (ER as the Americans call it) they heard the distinctive accent from the operating theatres through to the intensive care department.

One of the standout features of the deployment was the exposure to numbers of casualties from IEDs and suicide bombings. Casualties in that number, and with such severe injuries, wassomething the ADF Health Services had not experienced since Vietnam.

Getting the Det together in one place was a difficult task -- the team were mostly shift workers and all put in long hours day and night.

Det members worked side by side with their US colleagues, both USAF and US Army, in treatment of the injured and wounded in Iraq and have seen three US rotations.

As well as picking up a smattering of Arabic, members of the Det were introduced to several new words slipping into the English language as spoken in Iraq, such as Fobbit. Fobbit is a colloquial term for personnel who live and work in the Coalition Forward Operating Bases dotted throughout Iraq.

It’s been a long hard haul for the Det in the last six months; their lives have revolved around work, sleep and the occasional lull.