The Norwegian Armed Forces has deployed a Role 2 Field Hospital to Chad in support of the United Nations with the aid of engineers from Marshall Land Systems.
The Norwegian Deployable Hospital (NDH) is providing damage control surgery and patient stabilisation before evacuation to main hospitals in the injured person’s home country if that is necessary. The hospital is staffed by both Norwegian and Serbian medical staff.
“In Afghanistan, the Taliban were our biggest threat, in Chad it is disease and germs,” said Norwegian surgeon Bartlie Hansen, adding “the NDH is actually cleaner than any hospital in Norway.”
Major General Elhadji Mahamadou Kandji, the UN forces Military Commander, added: “It is the finest military field hospital ever used in a UN peacekeeping operation.”
The NDH has an emergency room, two operating theatres, a post operative unit, intensive care unit, pharmacy, x-ray department, dental unit, laboratory, outpatient unit and medium dependency wards. All the core facilities are housed in fully controlled environment shelters developed by Marshall.
The Marshall Land Systems engineers deployed with the hospital are in Chad to assist the Norwegian engineers to maintain the hospital’s vital systems at their peak performance.
“The commitment shown by our engineers confirms their ability and also the integrity and determination that they show to our customer in ensuring that they receive the ongoing support due to them,” said Peter Callaghan, Chief executive of Marshall Land Systems.
Marshall has provided three Role 2 hospitals to the Norwegian Defence Forces together with four Role 1 facilities, which enable immediate surgery to be carried out on seriously ill patients. Each of these container based hospitals consists of a central spine with specialist modules attached to it. The six shelters in the central spine act as additional transportation containers and all the specialist modules reduce in size to a standard ISO 20 ft configuration for land, sea and air, by C 130, transportation.