Humanitarian aspects of health support in operations other than war

The decade of the 1990s proved to be very busy for health personnel serving in the Australian Defence Force (ADF). During this time, they deployed to areas as far away as Africa, after the genocide in 1994, and areas closer to home. There have been missions in Indonesia, Bouganville, and Papua New Guinea. In more current times, the most significant deployment has been to East Timor where health personnel remain today. Furthermore, there have been a number of deployments on short missions to various areas within Australia's strategic area of interest. Every mission has a mission statement. In all cases involving health personnel, the statement outlines their primary tasking, which will be the provision of health support to the troops in force. The secondary tasking, which inevitably follows, is the provision of health support to the local community from within any spare capacity. It is this spare capacity that this article will discuss. The primary focuses of this article are what care should be provided and the limitation of such care, how health care should be provided, what training is required for health personnel who will provide this care, and the policies that are required to be in place to monitor this care.