Health hotting up

Hot topic: Recent changes aimed at mitigating heat injury and improving management have been incorporated into doctrine.

OVER the past few months, you would have been inundated with information, videos and briefs about heat injury and its management.

This has come about because of recent changes to the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
These changes have now been incorporated into doctrine and recently re-released as the amended LWP-General 1-2-2 Field Health and Hygiene.

Heat injury is not just restricted to the tropics. It can occur anywhere when personnel are operating in temperatures higher than they are acclimatised to.

This publication contains important and helpful tools and information to enable you to understand and manage the causes, risks and treatment of heat injury.

Chapter 6 is the key change and it covers what you need to know about recognising the onset of heat injury in yourself and your mates and the immediate actions you will need to take to treat it.

It also provides tools in the form of tables covering topics such as recommended work/rest regimes and recovery times so that you can work towards preventing heat injury before it kicks in.

But wait, there’s more!

This piece of doctrine also covers the other end of the scale – cold injury!

This will be just as relevant with winter about to set in. Dehydration can also be a big concern in cold weather.
Overall, LWP-G 1-2-2 provides information and tools that are vital to help you maintain your own health and that of your mates will enable you to make informed decisions.

Accessing doctrine

LWP-G 1-2-2 will be out in print soon, but in the meantime, you can find it in the Army Doctrine Electronic Library (ADEL) at http://adel.defence.gov.au

If units require more hardcopies of this (or any Land Warfare doctrine), these can be ordered using the SP 150 Publication Access Request Form available on Defweb or using the order doctrine feature of ADEL Online.

Contacts and comments

YOUR input is vital to maintaining up- to-date publications.

Please use the Contact Us link on ADEL Online to tell us what you think about LWP-G 1-2-2 or any other piece of Land Warfare doctrine.

All the printed publications also have comment cards in the back that can be sent direct to Doctrine Wing, Land Warfare Development Centre.

If you have a chance to be involved in validating doctrine, please make the best use of the opportunity.
You can make a difference.

What’s new on ADEL Online

• LWP-G 1-2-2 Field Health and Hygiene Handbook AL1 (10/12/2005).
• LWP-G 1-1-4 Unit Catering Support (01/12/2005).
• LWP-G 4-1-4 Unit Resource Management on Operations (01/12/2005).
• LWP-G 3-9-10 CBRN Defence (06/12/2005).
• LWP-G 3-6-10 Protection from Fire and Other Emergencies (09/12/2005)..