Field medical shelters

　　
Surgery in a field medical shelter

　　
A medical worker gets water from an individual water purifier.

　　
Backpacks for military doctors

　　
Fork-shaped litter

　　In recent years, the Medical Equipment Research Institute of the General Logistics Department of the PLA has developed a large number of highly sophisticated and convenient field first aid equipment that have displayed their prowess in this ongoing earthquake relief operations.

　　Frontline rescue system

　　In the Achievements Exhibition Hall of the institute, some backpacks attracted the reporters' eyeballs. They are backpacks for medical doctors and medics that are widely used in this earthquake relief operation. In the backpacks, 60-odd first aid medicines and devices, sputum aspirator, oxygen mask, surgery instrument packs are put separately into 10-odd small packs with each being fastened in the backpacks by a string of Velcro.

　　Backpacks for medical doctors and medics have played a vital role in current medical rescue operations. With complete set of medicines and medical instruments, the portable and waterproof backpacks can win precious time for medical workers to save the lives of the injured people in bad weathers, such as successive raining days, and they are praised as "the '120' (first aid) on the back" by quake victims.

　　Wounded evacuation system

　　On the way to evacuate seriously injured people, how to give uninterrupted first aid to them? The Medical Equipment Research Institute developed a "three dimensional evacuation system for the wounded", which is mainly made up of field ambulance and the wounded transport vehicles, and it has rendered outstanding service in this earthquake relief operation.

　　There are four standard litters in the wounded transport vehicle with two fixed on each side of the vehicle. The vehicle is equipped with 10-odd first aid devices such as defibrillation monitor and first aid breathing machine. Political Commissar Zhao Xiaowei told the reporters that the wounded transport vehicle can each time either carry four injured people or two heavily wounded people lying on litters and three wounded sitting on seats, and two medical workers. These vehicles are the major medical equipment for rescuing the wounded in this quake relief operation.

　　The field ambulance is equipped with not only complete set of first aid facilities, but also many hi-tech equipment such as GPS, allowing doctors to perform respiratory resuscitation, electrocardiographic blood oxygen content monitoring, and remote transmission of information on the condition of the injured people during evacuation. The vehicle has won high admiration of 500-odd experts from over 100 countries and regions at the Fourth International Medical Service Equipment Exhibition in 2007. Some American military medical experts marveled at the sophistication of modern medical service equipment developed by the Chinese people when they visited the system.

　　Mobile medical system

　　The leapfrog development of medical service equipment of foreign armies has given researchers of the institute a heightened sense of urgency. Through years of hard efforts, they successfully developed three intensive and multifunctional "digitalized field mobile hospital", namely tent-type, wheel-type and shelter-type "digitalized field mobile hospital".

　　The tent-type field mobile hospital is composed of medical functional tents, ward tents, passageway tents, and medical boxes. The entire system is portable and can be airdropped, and is capable of supplying hot and cold air as well as oxygen.

　　The wheel-type field hospital is made up of field surgery vehicle, field X-ray vehicle, field blood transport vehicle, and sterilization trailer, etc. The field surgery carriage can be amazingly expanded on both sides, but it looks like an ordinary carriage when it is on the move. When expanded, the floor space within the carriage can be increased up to 30 square meters, and it takes only 30 minutes for four people to complete the installation of carriage body and medical equipment.

　　The shelter-type hospital has more functions, and the whole system consists of 12 shelters. The entire system can be swiftly transported on land, at sea and by air, and is able to set up 200 beds in a little more than one hour.It can perform 100 surgeries in 24 hours. With constant temperature and clean environment, a field surgery shelter can accommodate four operating tables equipped with controllable operating table, shadowless lamp, anesthesia machine, monitor, endotherm knife, and vacuum suction unit.

　　According to Sun Jinggong, head of the Science and Technology Department of the institute, in case doctors encounter some difficult and complicated cases, they can connect with the PLA medical network via GPS on medical diagnostic vehicle to seek consultations and advices from well-known medical experts throughout the army.

　　In this massive earthquake, two large hospitals in Mianzhu City collapsed. One set of field medical shelters set up by the General Hospital of the Beijing Military Area Command shoulders the medical rescue and treatment task for the entire Mianzhu area. Since it began to admit injured people at 8:00 a.m.of May 20, this shelter-type field hospital has treated 1,300-odd outpatients and performed 100-odd surgeries.

　　Sanitary and epidemic prevention system

　　After the earthquake, medical staffs in the frontline have to face the rigors of drinking water supply and epidemic prevention. It is learned that dozens of field epidemic prevention vehicles developed by the institute have rushed to the quake-hit areas to carry out epidemic prevention work.

　　With two elevating spraying devices at its rear, this type of epidemic prevention vehicle is capable of mobile sterilization, and indoor and outdoor disinfecting operation. It can sterilize 500 square meters of polluted area and disinfect about 100,000 square meters in one hour. Since May 20, the Academy of Military Medical Sciences has organized four epidemic prevention teams made up of almost 100 medical workers, taking with them sanitary and epidemic prevention vehicles, to Yingxiu Town of Wenchuan County to carry out sanitary and epidemic prevention operations. The utilization of sanitary and epidemic prevention vehicles has greatly reduced manual operation and increased work efficiency, and they sprayed more than 20,000 kilograms of disinfectant in a total area of 350,000 square meters in three days.

　　In order to meet the demands of troops in field trainings or carrying out other missions, the institute has specially developed a type of individual soldier's water purifier. Such water purifier can filter natural water and water from rivers and ponds and it filters water with functional adsorptive filtering materials with a manual pump as power. Each filter element can produce one ton of water and is capable of producing 10 liters of drinking water in one hour. At present, a batch of water purification devices such as individual soldier's water purifier and squad-purposed manual water purification devices are widely used in the quake relief frontline and have greatly alleviated the urgent demand of drinking water of the relief troops.

　　By Li Liangliang, Liu Yiqiang and Chai Yongzhong

　　(May 30, PLA Daily)                                           Editor: Dong Zhaohui