USAMRDC Mobile Training Team Supports Joint Multinational Effort in United Arab Emirates

Story by Paul Lagasse

Medical Research and Development Command

FORT DETRICK, Md. – A team of medical and nursing instructors from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command’s Institute of Chemical Defense and Institute of Infectious Diseases recently traveled to the United Arab Emirates to train UAE military medical and chemical defense personnel in the latest techniques for managing chemical and biological casualties and help incorporate them into their patient decontamination training and procedures.

The five-member Mobile Training Team from USAMRICD’s Chemical Casualty Care Division was invited to conduct the course – the first time it was offered in the UAE – by the staff of a joint multinational mission that has been working with the UAE military to establish a modern nationwide trauma, burn and rehabilitative care system for military and civilian casualties.

“This course was a little unusual for us,” says Lt. Col. Devin Wiles, MRICD’s chief of training and education, who co-led the team with his counterpart at USAMRIID, Lt. Col. Ahmad Yassin. “Our normal niche is training medical personnel, but for this course we had chemical defense troops participating as well. Unlike in the U.S. military, where medical and chemical units co-train and mesh effectively, their organizational structure doesn’t provide opportunities for those units to work in close conjunction. We didn’t just train them in casualty management, we also helped them learn how to work with one another, which was a unique experience for them.”

The five-day Medical Management of Chemical and Biological Casualties course took place at Zayed Military City, a sprawling campus located just south of the country’s capital city, Abu Dhabi. The course included an overview of chemical and biological agents, demonstrations of the principles of decontamination, a tabletop exercise and practical exercises to establish a patient decontamination site. Sixty-six physicians, nurses, combat medics and chemical defense personnel from the UAE’s Medical Services Corps, Chemical Defence Command and National Guard, as well as from the U.S. Army’s 3rd Security Force Assistance Brigade, participated in the course, earning continuing education hours toward maintaining their medical certifications.

Wiles noted that the team is used to being flexible and adapting course content and structure to the specific needs of the groups being trained. For example, on this trip the team adjusted the course schedule to accommodate daily prayers and mealtimes of the participants. Travel to the UAE offered some logistical hurdles, as direct flights to Abu Dhabi – over 7,000 air miles from MRICD in Aberdeen, Maryland – were unavailable. But Wiles said that such things are par for the course for the team.

“Next time, we’ll prepare a little better for the heat, though,” he adds.

The MTT offered the course at the invitation of the Trauma Burn & Rehabilitative Medicine Technical Assistance Field Team, a joint U.S./UAE military-civilian partnership established five years ago to provide technical support to the UAE’s medical forces and to help the country improve its capabilities to respond to acute, chronic and complex trauma, treat burn injuries and restore mobility to people with physical disabilities. With support from the U.S. Army Security Assistance Training Management Organization, the TBRM team is working to establish an American College of Surgeons Level 1-verified trauma center in the UAE to support combat casualty care, civilian trauma care and recovery and rehabilitation of UAE, U.S. and partner nation Service Members and civilians.

The joint services medical training offered by MRICD’s Chemical Casualty Care Division is recognized as the gold standard for first responders, medical practitioners and hospital executives who prepare for and respond to chemical incidents. In conjunction with RIID, the CCCD offers courses at MRICD and around the world via the MTT. In addition to the medical management course that the MTT taught in the UAE, the CCCD also offers courses in field and hospital management of chemical and burn casualties.

At the completion of the five-day course, the MTT received accolades from both Staff Brigadier Dr. Aysha Sultan Al Dhaheri, the executive director of the Military Health Executive Directorate in the UAE Ministry of Defence, and Brig. Gen. Saeed Al Kaabi, the commander of the Chemical Defence Command.

“General Al Dhaheri expressed the hope that we could return and participate in a larger scale training mission in the near future,” says Wiles. “We would certainly welcome the opportunity to do that.”