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    Urgent medical items shipped to support troop surge

    Urgent Medical Items Shipped to Support Troop Surge

    Photo By Dustin Senger | U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Lerry Forester, from Summerville, S.C., organizes...... read more read more

    CAMP AS SALIYAH, QATAR

    02.15.2010

    Story by Dustin Senger 

    Area Support Group - Qatar

    CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar — U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Lerry Forester is managing $17 million of Central Command life-saving medical items, according to reports Feb. 15. The dollar value doubled over the past three weeks due to increased urgent care equipment requests for the surge of military forces in Afghanistan.

    Forester, from Summerville, S.C., administers a Patient Movement Item tracking system, as a tri-service component assigned to U.S. Army Medical Materiel Center Southwest Asia at Camp As Sayliyah, Qatar. He supports 25 medical treatment facilities and casualty evaluation centers across Southwest Asia.

    USAMMC-SWA provides medical logistics management for CENTCOM war fighters. Over 120 service members and contractors fulfill material requests for over 600 customers by maintaining a warehouse stocked with nearly 3,000 different items.

    "I'm usually the first one in and the last one out," said Forester, referring to frequent 14-hour work days since deploying to the Qatar base last month. "Everyone pretty much knows the importance of my job."

    Forester describes himself as "the heartbeat" of the medical maintenance shop. "Before the biomedical repairmen get anything, everything comes through me," he said, hovering over several open boxes inside an office crowded with spread sheets, equipment racks, defibrillators, ventilators, infusion systems, suctioning units, intravenous controllers, wound vacuum-assisted closers and patient monitoring devices.

    "This is the life-saving equipment patients need," said Forester. "The units downrange must be able to use the equipment once it hits the ground."

    Besides changes in high-value PMI equipment, various critical medical supplies carried by frontline combat medics and corpsman has been shipped, such as gauze pads, bandages, tourniquets and medicines.

    "We used our data from Fallujah to prepare for the surge in Afghanistan," said Army Lt. Col. Thomas Hines, USAMMC-SWA commander, referring to an analysis of needs completed in January. "We looked at the top 200 items and then increased our numbers there."

    According to Hines, total medical material volume hasn't been affected by the surge, due to a concurrent draw down of forces in Iraq. However, the demand for trauma-type items has increased in Afghanistan.

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    NEWS INFO

    Date Taken: 02.15.2010
    Date Posted: 02.15.2010 10:20
    Story ID: 45380
    Location: CAMP AS SALIYAH, QA

    Web Views: 427
    Downloads: 393

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