Under the auspices of the Leonardo Da Vinci Exchange Project, qualified Armed Forces of Malta (AFM) combat-medic personnel, alongside Gozo-branch staff of the Malta Red Cross, have just recently completed their last phase of training overseas with the Italian Red Cross.
The Italian Red Cross’s Special Rescue Department have over these last two years been engaged in setting up combat life savers and combat medics for the AFM, in close collaboration with the Malta Red Cross. Apart from the several local hours of varied training in pre-hospital care and ambulance service with the Department of Health, on-job training in Italy was deemed beneficially essential for its key training exposure to seasoned veteran Italian combat medics, new skills and more in depth equipment use.
The AFM can now fulfill its roles in EU scenarios when deploying overseas its military personnel on peace support operations, beside those other inherent roles such as Search-and-Rescue (SAR) which it fulfills on the national territory. Combat medics are trained soldiers who provide first aid and frontline trauma care on the battlefield whilst adhering to International Red Cross and relevant Geneva Conventions during times of peace or war.
The Maltese contingent was led my AFM Surgeon Major Giacinto Bartolo, and was made up of eight soldiers and two Gozo Red Cross branch staff. The intensive two-week stay in Italy was evenly spread between the Milan-based “Centro Emergenze Lombardia” in Legnano, the Carabinieri and Civil Protection base at Bardonecchia (Torino), the Caserma Pierantoni and the Castelnuovo di Porto base (Rome), the old harbour city of Trani, and also in Bari. Throughout their stay, the contingent was hosted by the Italian Military Red Cross.
This final phase of training overseas included hazardous materials (HAZMAT) and NBC-decontamination, explosives and mine-risk education, mechanical battle-area clearance operations, ambulance transportation and servicing with test drives of various assets, Humanitarian Law, emergency field hospital tent pitched and dismantling, extrication from war vehicles and helicopter evacuations.. The Maltese personnel’s participation was assessed throughout this training with some other 40 Italian army soldiers from different branches of the service.
Like the Malta portion of the training, Dr Marco Filippi was the principal instructor on this course as well as other Italian Red Cross and Army directing-staff. AFM Warrant-Officer II Martin Borg was also specifically asked to deliver lectures on the treatment for choking adults, young children and babies to the course participants.