Europe's first mobile hospital -

20 Minutes

  • The Toulouse Disaster Response Center has developed a mobile hospital, a simple truck that can be transformed into a 66 m2 field hospital.

  • This prototype has the capacity to intervene anywhere and take care of 18 patients, eight of whom are in absolute emergency.

  • He enters service this Monday at the Bayonne hospital where he will replace the emergency services, saturated in the context of the Covid-19 health crisis.

As many emergency services begin to saturate in the face of the influx of Covid-19 positive patients, it could be a quick and effective solution to unclog them.

In any case, this is the role that the mobile hospital of the Toulouse University Hospital Center for Disaster Response will fulfill for the first time.

This device, unique in Europe, will be installed from this Monday near the Center hospitalier de la Côte Basque, in Bayonne.

While the health crisis is raging there, it will temporarily strengthen the emergency department.

The Europe Occitanie multi-purpose mobile unit of the Samu 31 is loaded onto its truck and will be deployed today at @CHCoteBasque


This mobile hospital will strengthen emergencies by improving the separation of COVID and non-COVID patients @ARS_OC @ARS_NAquit @PrefetOccitanie pic. twitter.com/5hvVPHHAhN

- Toulouse University Hospital (@CHUdeToulouse) November 9, 2020

From a distance, it looks like a banal refrigerated truck, but quickly the logos of the Samu or the departmental fire and rescue service affixed to its body suggest that it is not trivial.

Once deployed like a transformer, this 12-meter-long, 66-m2 structure can accommodate 18 patients, eight of whom are in absolute emergency, in five different boxes.

It has the advantage of being transportable in A400M

"It has the advantage of being able to deploy in twenty minutes when it takes nearly 48 hours for a field hospital as was the case in Mulhouse during the first wave", explains Vincent Bounes, the head of the Samu de Toulouse. behind the creation of this prototype.

After the Barcelona attacks, the latter said to himself that there was a lack of a device that could be deployed quickly and anywhere when an industrial disaster occurs or a plane crash in the middle of nowhere thanks to its autonomy in water, electricity or gas for medical use,

"Nothing corresponded to our needs, we wanted to be able to have a structure that allows all patients to be given the same opportunity", continues the practitioner.

Whether in the desert, in the depths of the countryside where there is no hospital within 50 km around or even in the city center on a car park, it can be installed wherever it is necessary to take charge of victims on the spot.

And, despite its 17 tonnes, it has the advantage of being transportable in A400M.

As well equipped as any intensive care unit, it is also more comfortable than military tents.

In hard, it resists snowstorms, radiation and even has air conditioning.

The “Shelter”, a small name given by its designers, was inspired by military command posts.

The pandemic to accelerate its development

And it is therefore logically towards the company Cegelec which produces them that the team of emergency workers turned.

“It comes from a concept developed with the military, but it is the first version for a Samu, for whom the basic need was speed and agility.

We began to discuss in 2019 and the pandemic to accelerate its development, ”explains Gilles Laborde, president of Cégelec Defense.

A prototype which cost 2.3 million euros, partly financed by European funds, and within the framework of a Franco-Spanish partnership.

It is already inspiring other hospitals which have not hesitated to call their Toulouse counterparts in recent days.

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  • Aquitaine

  • epidemic

  • Disaster

  • Chu

  • Covid 19

  • Hospital

  • Bayonne

  • Toulouse

  • 20 minutes video

  • Coronavirus