Airborne Medics deploy to Falklands in the fight against coronavirus
Airborne medics have deployed to the Falkland Islands at short notice to reinforce the far-flung territory’s only hospital in the battle against coronavirus
After being tasked on 28 March, a team of six soldiers from 16 Medical Regiment set off from Merville Barracks, Colchester on 30 March to RAF Brize Norton for the long flight down to the South Atlantic.
With them, they will take the equipment and personnel to provide an extra two beds to the three-bed intensive care unit at the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Port Stanley.
The Falkland Islands are a remote group of islands 8,000 miles away in the South Atlantic. British Forces have been securing the region since 1833 and guaranteeing the Islanders safety.
One of the medics deploying to the Falklands is Captain Marie Llewellyn, she is an intensive care nurse. Marie has been in the Army for eight years and has previously deployed to Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak in 2015.
Here’s what she had to say👇
‘It has been a hectic few days. I did an NHS shift at Homerton Hospital on Friday, and there was a message on my phone when I finished on Saturday morning saying I was going to the Falklands. Since then, we’ve been checking and packing our medical and personal equipment to go away.
We’re taking ventilators, oxygen and medication for two beds, and the nurses to run them so that we’re a self-sufficient addition to the hospital. I’m pleased to be going out and using my skills to help.’
16 Medical Regiment provides medical support to 16 Air Assault Brigade, the British Army’s global response force, and is trained and equipped to deploy on operations by parachute, helicopter or air landing.
The Regiment provides a full care pathway, treating casualties from the point of wounding to consultant-led damage control resuscitation and surgery to save life, limb and eyesight, as well as primary healthcare.
