Page 24 - QARANC Vol 16 No 2 2018

22 QARANC THE GAZETTE
Exercise Askari Serpent 2018
At the beginning of April, I travelled to North Luffenham to meet 2 Medical Regiment to begin the RSOI package prior to deploying to BATUK (British Army Training Unit) in support of Exercise Askari Serpent.
Exercise Askari Serpent is a six- week exercise, in partnership with the Kenyan Defence Force Medical Services, where the British Army delivers medical care to the local population. The overall team was 177 strong, led by 2 Medical Regiment, alongside 73 individual augmentees from 21 different regiments. This included Reservists like myself and a CMT1 from 253 (NI) Medical Regiment.
There were three Remote Area Treatment Teams (RATTs) made up of approximately 30 personnel. Each had two GDMOs, two or three nurses, a dental team and 10 – 15 CMTs. Each RATT was supported by vehicle mechanics and a comms team. Each RATT also had three embedded members of the Kenyan Defence Force (KDF). In my RATT, the KDF consisted of a nurse, a physician assistant and a nutritionist.
The deployment was split into three
Team members with a Kenyan tribal community
phases. Healthcare was delivered in Isiolo County, Samburu County and finally Nanyuki County. The combined focus was clinical outreach, health education (including dental) and continuing community engagement. Each phase brought totally different experiences.
The first phase was partly urban which meant we were treating in slums and a lot of the local population were HIV positive. It was here that I had my first experience of treating patients who had previously been treated by Witch Doctors.
The next phase took us into extremely
remote areas where we were treating tribes. This was fascinating work as we had to respect the traditions and beliefs of the local population whilst delivering Western medicine. It was challenging at times as the tribes expected patients to be seen in order of their importance rather than how sick they were. The young warriors were forbidden to stand with the female members of the tribe so tended to stay at the back away from the queue so were unable to get to triage. We got around this by sending experienced CMTs out to look at the queue prior to triage and if anyone looked obviously
International co-operation – working with the Kenyan Red Cross