National ABC deployment concept - 9. -

9. Medical Task Forces

In the event of a major damage event with a mass casualty incident (MANV), the local units of the medical and care service with their rapid response groups (SEGs) should be supported by federal forces (care level 3). The concept of the Medical Task Forces (more rarely: Medical Task Force - MTFs) has been controversially discussed in recent years between the federal government and the federal states and among the federal states and has been revised several times. As part of the "reform" of German disaster control, the Conference of Interior Ministers finally unanimously decided in June 2007 on the new concept for civil protection on the basis of the MTFs.

The original equipment concept provided for a staff strength of 56 men for each MTF, according to the latest concept paper ("The Medical Task Force - Preliminary Project and Operations Manual") of July 1, 2009, the target strength has been increased to 110 helpers, including 12 emergency doctors and 78 Paramedics. (27) Accordingly, each Medical Task Force is divided into five modules: leadership, decontamination of injured persons, medical treatment, transport and logistics / care. As a rule, an MTF has 20 (ambulance) transport and care vehicles, including a truck for decontaminating the injured, the so-called "Dekon-P 2+". As with the Dekon-P, the regular crew of the Dekon-P 2+ includes six 24 men support staff - including paramedics - are planned for the decontamination of the non-ambulatory patients. To carry out the decontamination of injured persons, the federal states agreed in September 2006 on a decon framework concept. (28) Due to the number of staff, the MTF has the same performance as a treatment station 50 (BHP 50), with which 50 patients can be cared for within one hour.

61 MTFs are to be set up nationwide, so that each MTF should cover an area within a radius of 50 kilometers. In order to set up the Medical Task Forces, the federal government will make 1.220 to 1.243 new vehicles available to the federal states in the coming years, according to various figures. (29) For months it has been unclear when the new MTFs will be set up. According to the current state of affairs, the reorganization is to begin at the beginning of 2010; by 2017, the 61 new units should be completely converted. The first 25 Dekon-P 2+ are to be delivered this year. The costs per Medical Task Force amount to 3,5 to 4 million euros, for a total of almost 250 million euros.

To date there is no significant capacity for decontamination of injured persons (Dekon-V). Only various ABC trains in the districts had provided their decon shower tents with roller constructions on their own initiative in order to be prepared for the care of patients. With the establishment of the 61 MTFs with an active strength of around 6.000 men, a significant deconv capacity is being built up here for the first time, which can also be used as a simple medical unit in conventional accidents.

The 61 planned MTFs are distributed among the federal states as follows: Baden-Württemberg (5 MTFs), Bavaria (7 MTFs), Berlin (3 MTFs), Brandenburg (5 MTFs), Bremen (1 MTF), Hamburg (2 MTFs), Hesse (4 MTFs), Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (3 MTFs), Lower Saxony (6 MTFs), North Rhine-Westphalia (10 MTFs), Rhineland-Palatinate (3 MTFs), Saarland (1 MTF), Saxony (3 MTFs), Saxony- Anhalt (3 MTFs), Schleswig-Holstein (2 MTFs) and Thuringia (3 MTFs). There are two ways of deploying the MTFs: Either the complete MTF is stationed at one location (e.g. a large city), or the individual modules are distributed across different locations. In any case, an MTF should be available at its place of use within 90 minutes in the event of an alarm.

The emergency services of the MTFs are at high risk because the security authorities, according to the "domino theory", reckon with a double terrorist strike, as is known from the theater of war in Iraq: First, a bomb explodes; when the rescue workers who have been summoned are gathered on site, it leaves A second (ABC) bomb was raised to kill the helpers. On April 14, 2008, the BBK therefore issued the "Recommendations for action on self-protection for emergency services from disaster control and aid organizations in the event of an attack" (HEIKAT). (30)

It should be noted critically that the establishment of the MTFs in no way means a strengthening of the existing disaster control capacities, since the MTF helpers come from the existing staff of the aid organizations. So no additional staff is called up, but the existing forces are only used in a different way of organization. With the introduction of the new vehicle types (treatment equipment trolleys, SAN equipment trolleys, etc.), the old vehicle variants (doctor's troop car, four-trolley, care combination, field kitchens, etc.) are being phased out in the long term. Older federal vehicles still in existence are given free of charge to the federal states or aid organizations and may be converted by them. But some representatives of the aid organizations fear that the concentration of federal aid on the MTFs will result in a decline in medical services in other areas if the aid organizations have to pay the maintenance costs for the former federal vehicles from their donations from 2010 onwards.

To complement the core elements of the ABC concept, the ATFs and MTFs, the federal government is planning to set up support units with 7.200 men (simple staff) and 1.411 vehicles for logistics and water supply (961 fire fighting vehicles, 450 hose trucks, etc.) and 1.388 vehicles for transporting the injured and for care (450 equipment car care, 450 care combination, 488 ambulance type B, etc.). The costs for this amount to around 80 million euros. In addition, the federal government continues to provide around a dozen EC 135 T2i civil protection helicopters for the rescue helicopter system. In addition, with the establishment of the MTFs, the nationwide supply of medical supplies is being expanded at the same time: a total of 24 "basic packages" of drugs and medical products are stored at several locations in order to be able to treat 150 seriously and 100 slightly injured people for three days. The storage locations include Berlin ( 3x basic packages) Bottrop, Chemnitz, Dortmund, Dresden (2x), Düsseldorf, Frankfurt / Main (2x), Fulda, Georgsmarienhütte, Görlitz, Hanover, Cologne, Leipzig (2x), Minden, Offenbach, Paderborn, Plauen and Stuttgart (2x) .

Address: -

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Sources:

(27) Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Relief: The Medical Task Force (MTF) - Preliminary Project and Operations Manual, Bonn, July 2009

(28) Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance: Framework concept for the decontamination of injured persons of the federal-state working group - final version, Bonn, September 2006,

(29) Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance: Equipment concept Medical Task Force (MTF), Bonn, undated, p. 3,

(30) Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (among others): Recommendations for action for self-protection for emergency services of the disaster control and relief organizations in an operation after an attack (HEIKAT), Flyer, o. O., April 14, 2008

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