Mulhouse (AFP)
The beds are made, the oxygen bottles ready for use. As of Tuesday, the military field hospital in Mulhouse will take care of its first serious patients with coronavirus to relieve the nearby hospital overwhelmed by an increasing influx of patients in intensive care.
"It is historic and exceptional in keeping with this exceptional health crisis." For the first time, the main doctor Antoine is responsible for deploying in France a military structure usually reserved for war wounded. She will now have to treat civilian patients in acute respiratory distress.
Behind him, a soldier brings the pillows, while others take care of the final preparations.
"As of tomorrow (Tuesday) the first patients will arrive in the structure", advises the main doctor Antoine, behind his white mask.
The technical and logistical security of this "military resuscitation element" (EMR) of the health service of 30-bed armies has been validated. Last Monday afternoon, there was one last fire safety check to be carried out by the Haut-Rhin firefighters.
"We are happy to be there, to be useful in this crisis and to be able to come and help Mulhouse", explains the main doctor Antoine to a hospital doctor in a white coat who came to discover the structure.
- "Daily feed" -
Seen from the sky, this temporary hospital takes the form of a long central tent from which extend four arms on each side. In the middle, a white flag with a red cross.
Inside, a vast central corridor, where the soldiers come and go, all masked, serves on one side the care units in a row with each ten beds, on the other, offices, a rest room for the nursing staff, a pharmacy and a drug preparation area.
Main artery of the system, the corridor will see at one end the hundreds of caregivers subject to strict dressing hygiene rules and by the other, patients transferred from the emergency to the civilian hospital by a fire engine will cover the approximately 200 meters that separate them.
"We will welcome them in the unit and we will treat them until we can wean them from their breathing apparatus and transfer them to a conventional care service before they leave the hospital," explains lead doctor Antoine.
Given the still "rustic" setting of the field hospital and despite the "high-tech" equipment, the director of assembly operations at the EMR explains that patients with organic failures other than pulmonary will not be admitted.
"If our patients degrade too much, we will transfer them back to intensive care," he continues. This augurs for a "daily flow (of patients) between the hospital and the structure".
Hence this choice made to deploy military tents directly on the parking lot of the civilian hospital rather than in a more distant building.
"The patient transfer phase is a critical phase, where they are outside the care units, so it must be as short as possible," said lead doctor Antoine.
- "Completely autonomous" -
This also allows the military installation to rely on the imaging and biology resources of the Mulhouse hospital.
For the rest, the staff as well as the technical and logistics, "we are completely autonomous," says the military official.
According to the Armed Forces Health Service (SSA), around a hundred caregivers (anesthetists-resuscitators, nurse anesthetists-resuscitators, epidemiologists, nurses and nursing assistants) are mobilized to take care of the thirty patients expected.
After the announcement of its deployment by Emmanuel Macron a week ago, the departure of equipment from the Loiret Friday, the tents had started to be erected on Saturday, surrounded by mesh barriers.
"We did it as quickly as possible with significant logistical constraints, but a lot of means were put at our disposal to be able to converge the men and the material here and to assemble this structure in 48 hours", welcomes the main doctor Antoine.
© 2020 AFP