FIRST AID
Vital supplies bound for hospitals as Op Baghdad Assist begins

The Sea King, Shark 07 assigned to Kanimbla was immediately readied. It was to be backed up by the Seahawk, Tiger 77 helicopter attached to HMAS Darwin.

By Graham Davis

The Royal Australian Navy was the first to go into action to supply urgently
needed medical supplies to civilian hospitals in Baghdad.

Within hours of learning the hospitals were low on supplies because of looting and patient presentations, the Minister for Defence, Senator Robert Hill authorised and launched Operation Baghdad Assist.

Immediately, doctors, nurses, medics and supply personnel on board HMAS
Kanimbla went to the ship’s store to determine what surplus medical equipment could be spared and sent into Iraq.

Several tonnes of equipment ranging from masks, to dressings to intravenous fluids were identified.

Getting them from the 8,450 tonne amphibious transport, then in the Northern Gulf, was the next task.

The Sea King, Shark 07 assigned to Kanimbla was immediately readied. It was to be backed up by the Seahawk, Tiger 77 helicopter attached to HMAS Darwin.

There was soon an eager string of sailors taking the vital stores from below decks to the two helicopters. A doctor would accompany the stores.

Once loaded the helicopters flew ashore to a Kuwaiti airfield where an RAAF Hercules waited.

Kanimbla’s medical officer CMDR Doug McKenzie and a medic flew on the helicopters signing the supplies over to WGCDR Geoff Robinson who went on to Baghdad.

The medical supplies were quickly transferred from the helicopters to the transport.

A squad of commandos from 4 RAR went with the aircraft. Once on the ground at Baghdad International Airport, captured just days earlier by Coalition forces, the commandos took up picket positions around the aircraft ensuring forklifts and their drivers were protected while they lifted the pallets, estimated to be holding seven tonnes of supplies, from the cargo hold.

The RAAF pilots kept their turbines running during the unloading.

The images of the arrival of the supplies, bolstered by additional stores from Kuwait and the US, were screened in Australian living rooms within hours.

Realising the supplies provided by Kanimbla would not be enough, Senator Hill authorised the gathering of further medical stores in Australia and for two other Hercules to fly them across the Indian Ocean to the region.

On the night of April 12/13 trucks carried the stores, donated by a number or organisations including the NSW Department of Health (Liverpool and Westmead Hospitals), Johnson and Johnson, Baxter and B. Braun, to Sydney’s Richmond RAAF Base.

The stores were loaded and the aircraft departed, one going via Perth to collect additional supplies to treat burns victims.

MAJGEN Ken Gillespie, the Head of Strategic Operations said Defence could not have achieved this response alone.
He said the quick response was due to cooperation across a number of government departments including the Department of Health and Aging, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, AUSAID and the NSW Health Department.

MAJGEN Gillespie said the recent experience with Operation Bali Assist meant various government agencies were able to respond to the task promptly and effectively.

“Operation Baghdad Assist is part of the Australian Government’s commitment to humanitarian assistance for the people of Iraq,” Senator Hill said.

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