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Kabul airport location6/3/2023 More than 79,000 people left the country on around 330 U.S. A passenger experienced an in-flight medical emergency on nearly every C-17 Globemaster III that ferried Afghan evacuees out of Kabul, Huhn said, from childbirth to nausea and vomiting to fainting or a more traumatic injury. “Things were not necessarily going to occur as we’ve been trained to do traditionally,” Huhn said. The squadron brought in a few dozen more troops to support medical procedures, and airmen brushed up on a broad range of clinical care. The 379th sent a team to work out of the Kabul airport to help move a large influx of patients onto aircraft - a decision that came in handy on Aug. Typical medevacs are pre-planned, with plenty of patient information available and with fewer at once. You’re flying into a hostile environment,” Vitale said. “I don’t think, in the last 10 years, that anybody who was deployed in that environment was involved in anything similar or even close to combat-related missions. And airmen only had so many medical supplies to go around. They had trouble with sedatives and lacked viable veins for intravenous infusions. Patients bled in flight and struggled with low blood pressure and hypoxia, Vitale said. There, though, Vitale and his colleagues had to juggle 25 patients whose health was still tenuous and required “very intense management and troubleshooting” for several stressful hours in flight, he said. Critical care teams - a doctor, a respiratory therapist and a nurse - usually take on patients who stabilize over multiple days before flying to a new facility. Thursday was becoming Friday by the time Vitale’s group arrived in Kabul. We don’t know who they are, what their ages are, what their injuries are, but just be prepared for whatever you find when you get there.” “We don’t know how many people you’re going to get. “This is what we call an ‘unregulated mission,’” Vitale said. 27, 2021, who were medically evacuated from Kabul, Afghanistan, after the bombing outside of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. Army, soldiers, airmen and civilian staff at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, receive injured on Friday, Aug. They scrambled to take off on a three-hour, “very pensive” flight, he said. Vitale was two hours into his own post-mission nap at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, when his team got word of the bombing. Mendoza and Reed made rounds to check on the patients’ statuses, set up the equipment needed to load those who were stable enough onto planes, tried to reunite Afghan family members, and met the jets as they landed. Any available vehicle became makeshift ambulances, shuttling medics, orphaned toddlers, or people who couldn’t walk, to the flight line and back for hours. Troops treated the casualties anywhere they could find space. Medical staff at the Norway-run field hospital at first differentiated between patients by naming them after Norwegian mountains, then describing them by their injuries or other monikers, Mendoza said. Without the ability to communicate, patient paperwork, paper itself, or even names, they needed to think on their feet. (Planet Labs/Associated Press) ‘Unregulated mission’Īlongside the Americans came the Afghans. Satellite image shows Kabul International Airport and the location of an explosion near the Abbey Gate. ![]() Medical staff worked with two soldiers manning the morgue to identify the deceased and put them in temporary body bags until their remains could return to the U.S. But they could administer his last rites.Īnother American died on the operating table, Reed said. The Marine’s countrymen couldn’t save him. He pointed them toward the dying American. Mendoza, on his way to get a tracheotomy tube to help another Marine breathe, overheard a nearby discussion of chaplains. “We didn’t know if he could hear us or not, but we were trying to comfort somewhat.” Reed stayed with one Marine as he died from brain swelling that was too severe to stop. “To find out later on that he did make it, and then to hear the stories of the things that he did for his fellow Marine, it makes you feel good about the efforts that you made that day - the pain and the things that you went through to get this stuff done,” Mendoza said. ![]() ![]() The captain soon learned his patient was awake and responsive. brought him back to life.”Īfter surgery, Mendoza visited the Marine to clean the grime off his face. Dominick Vitale, a physician on a critical care air transport team, who transported the Marine out of Afghanistan and noted he recovered well at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. (Mirzahussain Sadid for Alive in Afghanistan) Afghans stand in the sewage ditch outside Abbey Gate as they attempt to show documents to Marines processing evacuees on Aug.
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