The medical services of the Chinese and German armed forces started an integrated exercise on medical support in Germany’s southern military base of Feldkirchen on Friday.
The drill, codenamed “Combined Aid 2019,” is the first time that China’s paramedical forces in complete units and with field equipment have been deployed in Europe.
Among other things, the Chinese and German troops are to execute an international humanitarian medical mission dealing with a medical emergency scenario with several batches of injured people in different locations, and also with a staged cholera outbreak.
The participating teams will practice joint command and control and will learn to cooperate in treating and managing mass casualties in large-scale disease outbreaks. The aim is to improve the troops’ ability to deal with such situations in a coordinated manner and to explore new principles and practices.
The combined exercise is the second of its kind. In 2016, the military medical services of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the German Bundeswehr conducted their first joint exercise based on a fictitious earthquake scenario in the Chinese city of Chongqing.
PLA’s paramedical forces have in recent years actively participated in foreign exchanges and cooperation projects, including its aid to the fight against the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone and Liberia; the “Peace Train-2018” joint humanitarian and medical rescue exercise in Laos; and the free clinics with Vietnamese army along the country’s borders.
These activities have gained recognition by the international community and are welcomed by the peoples of the affected countries.