NI Medics saving lives on the front line.

More than 30 NI doctors and nurses are among a team of TA reservists from 204 Squadron (North Irish) Field Hospital (Volunteer) who took over responsibility for the biggest army hospital in the war zone.

More than half the unit is made up of staff from the five health trusts across Northern Ireland including consultants, surgeons, doctors, anaesthetists, nurses and radiographers who have joined reservists from non-healthcare organisations and regular soldiers at Camp Bastion.

Colonel Alan Black, 204 Field Hospital’s Commanding Officer, said; “The pace is probably slower than it would have been two years ago which is brilliant.”

“Essentially, the fewer patients that we see the happier we are. It means that fewer people are getting injured or becoming ill. But, I have to say the team is working exceptionally well.”

Colonel Black, an occupational physician, said: “The level of care that is delivered here is amazing for battle injured casualties. I have absolutely no doubt that people survive here who would not normally survive elsewhere and probably, I include, even back home in Belfast.”

“This is a unique experience and clinically, (for the) doctors and nurses here this is a wonderful opportunity for them to get experience that they simply wouldn’t get anywhere else.

“A lot of years ago the expertise actually lay within Northern Ireland and people would come to Northern Ireland to develop that expertise and those skills of managing trauma.”

“Fortunately, for all the right reasons, that is no longer the case. It is now the case that doctors and nurses from the Province learn an enormous amount when they are out here through the reserve forces.

“They get experience here that they would not get back home because we simply don’t see this sort of injury back in Northern Ireland.

Among the reservists from NI is 55-year-old Marie Semple (dubbed Combat Granny) from Co Antrim who has spent weeks caring for wounded soldiers, Afghan civilians and even insurgents at the field hospital in Camp Bastion – one of the busiest trauma units in the world.

“I didn’t think twice about coming out,” she said. I joined the TA late in life for the challenge and for the possibility of deploying somewhere.”

“I felt I needed to do another tour of Afghanistan as an ending to my challenge of joining the Territorial Army. The whole idea of joining was to deploy but, I have certainly got my money’s worth out of it.”

Major Semple signed up with the TA aged 43 and in 12 years has completed an operational tour of duty in Iraq in 2003 and was in Afghanistan during 2008.”

She added: “It is a different tour this time. This is a winter tour so it is quieter than 2008 which was a summer tour. The hospital has improved. Everything has improved.”