Members of the 119th Fighter Wing Medical Group of Fargo, N.D., deployed to Accra, Ghana in Africa, Sep. 3-17 to take part in a humanitarian exercise called MEDFLAG 2006.
The purpose of the medical exercise was threefold: refine medical field operations and gain experience in managing world health problems for U.S. theater medical response teams; share medical information and techniques with host country medical personnel; and provide humanitarian assistance to host nation populations in rural areas.
Theexercise utilized personnel from all four branches of the U.S. military in four different African countries. The 119th sent 58 members and support personnel.
“The deployment of the North Dakota National Guard members to Ghana is the first step in enhancing the state partnership between the state of North Dakota and the government of Ghana in a long range state partnership program,” said deployed 119th member Capt. Kyle Bakken.
The medical personnel worked in three locations in Accra during the 15-day deployment: a military hospital, the Nima Government Clinic, and the Mallam-Atta Market Government Clinic.
The deployed members performed medical examinations on civilian personnel and provided medication for treatment of illnesses. Eye and dental treatment was provided by National Guard physicians, dentists, optometrists, and nursing personnel.
People in depressed areas of Accra seemed desperate for medical care. When word spread of the U.S. military offering medical assistance in the outreach clinics, people started lining up outside the gates very early in the morning. At times, over 1,000 people waited.
Malaria was a very common illness seen in patients, with a wide variety of other injuries and ailments documented. In one case, an elderly woman walked to the clinic with a severely painful limp from an improperly healed broken hip from a past injury. She was offered medical advice by physical therapist Maj. Robert Schulte. The x-ray of the hip showed quite dramatically a wide gap in the bone.
“Although we realize that the people will have an ongoing need for medical care long after we have gone, we were able to perform a great number of medical screening examinations and especially identify people with diabetes and high blood pressure,” said Maj. Greg Haugen, a North Dakota Air National Guard flight surgeon and emergency physician. “The local clinics can now assist these individuals in treatment of their conditions. Through our manpower and equipment assistance to these clinics, we were able to evaluate more patients in two days than the clinic would have seen in almost a month, and many people would not have come to the clinic for an exam except for the fact that we [Americans] were there. We were also able to provide services not normally available in those neighborhoods like eyeglass fitting and dentistry.”
The 119th Fighter Wing Medical Group’s MEDFLAG 2006 numbers:
- 2,252 patients seen (averaging 550 per day)
- 1,900 prescriptions filled
- 2,840 medical services were provided including, blood pressure testing, glucose tests, immunizations and physical therapy
- 67 patients seen by the dentist
- 578 patients seen by the optometrist (600 pairs of eye glasses distributed)