In healthy discussion

Volume 48, No. 20, November 2, 2006

KEYNOTE: Defence Minister Dr Brendan Nelson, a former President of the AMA, opens the Health Conference.  Photo by AC Aaron Curran

By Graham Davis

MORE than 550 health professionals, 400 of them from the ADF, have attended a hard-hitting conference co-hosted by the Australian Military Medicine Association and Defence Health Services.

Held at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre from October 19 to 22, “Military Health – The Challenge” was boosted by a trade fair, where 32 organisations put on display their health services and equipment worth millions of dollars.

The conference is the second conducted by AMMA and Defence Health Services, the first being held in Sydney four years ago.

Delegates from as far afield as China, the US, Great Britain, New Zealand and Indonesia joined Australian Defence medical professionals at the conference.

Defence Minister Dr Brendan Nelson officially opened the conference.

Issues raised will now become important matters for discussion not only for ADF senior management but also government.

A leading British medical planner, MAJGEN Mike Von Bertele, suggested that Australia needed debate about whether it would accept large numbers of Australian casualties if it were to enter large-scale discretionary conflicts.

“Australia is slightly risk-averse,” he said. “You don’t want things to go wrong.”

The conference was told of Australian medical team members donating their own blood to save the life of a Timorese man stabbed in the shoulder and leg by a sword during the recent Dili riots.

A visiting US disaster expert gave his opinion that there was “zero hope” of providing enough hospital beds during a pandemic. He said that it might be necessary to improvise makeshift hospitals in schools and auditoriums, and to set up morgues in factories.

He suggested that in future large-scale emergencies many patients would remain in their homes and that medicos would monitor their treatment remotely using internet “camera in the home” technology.

An Australian expert told of the problems created in the Middle East by sandflies and the measures needed to be taken by those working in the open and inside. Temperatures of up to 55 degrees Celsius created environmental concerns.

Late delivery of mail from home was also recognised as a stressor, although daily email access was available.

There was a bouquet for three nurses who introduced a pilot scheme where undergraduate personnel could be given a taste of Defence through a series of night-time lectures.

An Air Force nurse told of having to improvise at the Balad hospital when patients being repatriated from Iraq to the US Military Hospital in Germany needed to be kept warm but supplies of blankets were temporarily exhausted.

“We put beanies on them or put them in a body bag and cut a hole for their faces,” she said.

At the end of the conference, SQNLDR Angus McDonell, a nursing officer from No 27 (City of Townsville) Squadron received the Weary Dunlop Award for his work in severe trauma medicine in north Queensland.

.