When ambulance officers carried a 13-year-old hit-run victim into the resuscitation room of the UN Military Hospital in Dili last month, the RAN's medical recuscitation team was stunned by the extent of her injuries.

The team also knew it had a fight on its hand to save the life of the East Timorese girl.

Found at the side of a Dili road, the girl had had both her thigh bones dislocated from her hips.

One of her arms was broken as was a collar bone.

What was most evident were the abrasions and cuts over most of her body, the result of being scraped along the road.

"The abrasions were so extensive they looked like she had been burnt," LEUT Darren Delaney, the doctor who heads the resuscitation team, said.

"She was critically ill. Her condition was 'flat.'"

LEUT Delaney was joined by nursing officer LEUT Belinda Townsend and medics WOMED Wendy Ross, ABMED Mandy Wright and ABMED Karen Burns.

For the first hours it was a case of keeping the girl alive with transfusions, oxygen and drugs.

Next task was to repair the limbs.

This came down to SQDLDR Annette Holian, from Melbourne who happens to be a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon.

In surgery SQDLDR Holian attached weights to pull the girl's legs back into the hip sockets.

She then put her in full traction.

The teenager was kept in the intensive care ward for several days before being transferred to the Australian-run 25 bed ward at the UN Military Hospital.

LEUT Delaney and his team along with SQDLDR Holian, and later her replacement GPCAPT Bruce, continued the treatment and observation of the girl.

"Two and a half weeks after she arrived we were able to transfer her to the International Red Cross Hospital here in Dili," LEUT Delaney said.

Another humanitarian aid medical case which tested the RAN resuscitation team was a man who fell 10 metres while collecting coconuts. (Tree falls are the third most prevalent traumas treated by Australian doctors and nurses in Dili, the first being mothers with labour complications followed by stabbings.)

The fall caused major fractures to his pelvis.

With a fall of this distance major internal trauma often results including massive bleeding and damage to internal organs.

"We kept him in the intensive care ward for 24 hours monitoring his condition," LEUT Delaney said.

The patient was later moved to the International Red Cross Hospital for recovery.

The present five person resuscitation team in Dili is expected to return to Australia in late August after a six month deployment.