A conference was held in the Crimea on military and space medicine
Reforming today’s army means that military units must master not only the most up-to- date battle techniques but also effectively rescuing and rehabilitating soldiers who have for some reason got into an emergency. Moreover, as Lieutenant General Yaroslav Skalko, Ukrainian Air Force Commander-in-Chief, emphasized, modern aerospace medicine, now on the rise in Ukraine, pays considerable attention to the preventive treatment of pilots. Military historians have estimated that during the 105-day war against Finland the Soviets lost 130-300,000 soldiers, while the Finns lost only 19,576. World War II claimed 43,448,000 Soviet lives, including those of 28 million servicemen, while Germany lost 4 million military and 2 million civilians. A comparative analysis of this statistics shows that the USSR fought far more than anybody else at the time a war that relied on cannon fodder, and this kind of tactic is no good for the Ukrainian army. As the value of a human life has risen to an unprecedented height today, military missions must be accomplished at the expense of as few casualties as possible. This drastically increases the role of military medicine which is supposed to shoulder the task of search, rescue, and eventually rehabilitation of those who find themselves in an emergency.
These problems were discussed on September 4-8 at a conference held in Sudak, the Crimea, by the Ukrainian Air Force Medical Service, the International Academy of Human Problems in Aviation and Astronautics, and the Ukrainian Air Force Search-and-Rescue Center. The conference, presided over by Air Force Commander-in-Chief Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Skalko, was intended to identify and work out ways of solving the current problems of searching for, rescuing and survival of flight crews, as well as the prospects of further development of the search, rescue, and rehabilitation system for Ukrainian Air Force flight personnel. The conference, which had international status, was attended by Russian aerospace medicine experts who highly appreciated their Ukrainian counterparts’ achievements in these areas.
The conference saw not only the analysis and discussion of the current state and prospects of military search, rescue, and rehabilitation but also a practical rescue exercise. In particular, conference delegates visited an Air Force research and testing center near Feodosiya, where a search-and-rescue exercise was held to demonstrate in practice the various methods of rescuing and providing first aid to a crew at sea.
Yet, the main task of military medical personnel is the prevention of illness among pilots. Thus, the delegates paid much attention to the scientific aspects of the diagnosis and treatment of diseases in flight personnel. During the conference, a pulmonary department was opened at the Sudak-based Ukrainian Air Force Search-and-Rescue Center. This institution will help boost up the preventive treatment of pilots. At the same time, military medics also held their now traditional September Meetings, a conference of military gastroenterologists who discussed current problems of diagnosing and treating the diseases of pilots’ and cosmonauts’ digestive organs.
The conference’s recommendations will help military physicians make considerable progress not only with search-and-rescue operations but also with preventing diseases in military pilots.
