Earthquake in Turkey and Syria: Italy donates a field hospital
In Antioch the agreement between the parties has been signed
The Italian EMT2 (Emergency Medical team type) field hospital, activated by the Civil Protection Department under the EU Mechanism and supplied by the Piedmont Region to support the hospital facilities in Antioch severely damaged by the earthquake of February 6, will be donated by Italy to Turkey.
In fact, the official agreement between the Italian and Turkish authorities was signed today, 4 March, at the field hospital.
The facility, which is part of the Maxi-emergency of the Piedmont Region, was the first certified in Italy by the World Health Organisation. It has, among others, an intensive care unit with up to four beds, an operating room, a delivery room, a radiology room and an analysis laboratory. The structure (14 tents for the medical part and 16 for the services and logistics), equipment and machinery is worth about 4.8 million euro.
The Emergency Medical Team Type 2 - operational thanks to the presence of about 70 doctors, nurses and logisticians - guarantees 24-hour emergency health care services, including surgery, and has a capacity of 20 in-patient beds. It is designed to provide support to local hospitals in serious difficulty after emergencies and, under certain conditions, can supplement or replace a small hospital facility.
The Italian field hospital is the sole in Europe to operate in the Defne area, near Antioch. It has been operational since February 17 : in a fortnight of activity there have been more than 2,000 accesses to the facility, 11 of which were red codes, and there have been 22 deliveries.
From today and for the next two weeks, there will first be a side-by-side and then a gradual handover between Italian and Turkish personnel, so that the facility can be properly managed by local health workers.
«The commitment of Italy and the entire Civil Protection National Service began immediately after the dramatic earthquake that affected Turkey and Syria and has continued unabated this month," said the Head of the Department, Fabrizio Curcio. "My thanks go to all the personnel involved in this emergency, but today, on the day on which the donation of the hospital to the Turkish authorities is official, I would like to thank the medical and health personnel and the Piedmont Region in particular, which has guaranteed professionalism, commitment and passion, providing concrete support to the Turkish population».
In the next months, thanks to the resources provided by the civil Protection Department, the Piedmont Region will have a new EMT2 field hospital, which will be made available in the future to deal with serious emergencies, including those at the international level.