By Navy News staff reporters

A RAN clearance diver has used his combat first aid kit and training to help save the life of a young Sudanese farmer badly wounded when his tractor detonated an anti-tank mine.

LEUT Steve Woodman, working as a Sector IV logistics officer, helped insert an intravenous drip and, at one stage, gave an anaesthetic to ease the man’s pain as they rushed him to hospital in an ambulance.

One of nine Australian service personnel involved in Operation Azure – the deployment of ADF personnel to the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Sudan – LEUT Woodman was on duty at Kadugli when the operations room radio took a call for help on August 4.

All the ADF members that deploy to the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) must do a Combat First Aid (CFA) course, training that became vital to the bid to save the farmer’s life.

The drama began when the hospital ambulance transporting LEUT Woodman, a local doctor and a nurse intercepted a tractor carrying the 22- year-old mine-blast victim to Kadugli Hospital for emergency treatment.

He was in excruciating pain from severe shrapnel cuts and at risk of dying from blood loss.

LEUT Woodman said the man was suffering from an eight centimetre round cut to the upper chest, a foot injury that removed several toes and a large gash to the right arm.

The blast had also exposed a section of his ribcage. Together, the doctor, nurse and LEUT Woodman treated the wounds using medical supplies from the Army and UN first aid kits as the ambulance drove back to the hospital in desperate race against time to save the man’s life.

“We didn’t know how much blood he’d lost so we put a drip into his left arm, using a one litre bag of compound sodium lactate and a 20 drop/ml blood/solution infuser set at the maximum rate,” he said.

LEUT Woodman’s Combat First Aid training enabled him to ease intense pain the man was suffering. “I told the doctor that my first aid kit contained an inhalation anaesthetic called methoxyflurane.

He urged me to give it to him right away to ease the pain”. LEUT Woodman followed his CFA training and handbook, administering a 3ml vial of methoxyflurane via a penthrox inhaler. Each breath the man took eased the pain and after about 12 minutes his condition stabilised.

The contents of the first aid kit and treatment allowed them to deliver him to Kadugli hospital in a conscious and stable condition.

The nine ADF personnel in Sudan under the command of Squadron Leader Ruth Elsley deployed with UNMIS on June 12 under Resolution 1590 after the government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to end a civil war which has raged for more than 20 years.

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