For debate: health service support planning for large-scale defensive land operations (part 2)

Abstract

This is the second of two articles that considers the medical planning implications of large-scale defensive military operations. This paper describes a unified approach to theatre level health services support planning based on four phases: collection, hospitalisation, evacuation and reception. It highlights the need for a modular and agile system of medical capability building blocks that can be grouped together for specific military medical challenges. It also reintroduces the concepts of mass casualty and the medical reserve. These two papers are designed to encourage debate around how we should be organised to face the new challenges of health services support in potential peer-on-peer military operations.

Non-combatant status of military medicine and contemporary warfare: old issues or new problems?

“…However, an enduring aspect of the nature of war has been variation in compliance with IHL by states and non-state armed groups. Therefore, both military and civilian medical units will need to determine whether the Geneva emblems provide protection under IHL or whether the tactical use of these emblems depends on the behaviours of their adversaries 12. If there is benefit from the protected status, the location and function of medical units must be shared between adversaries so that this protection is based on more than just the display of a flag: an issue analogous to the challenge of identification of hospital ships, medical transport aeroplanes and the discussion of medical zones during the 1930s.…”