* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
How is your medical know-how? Chris (at Chiron Resources) has just completed a couple of medical refresher courses, one in Trauma (bullets, bombs, IV drips etc) and a second in minor ailments (‘Delhi belly’, rashes, insect bites etc) and the pills, lotions and potions that are useful to carry. The knowledge from the second course is a ‘nice to have’ but it seems that nearly every time Chris deploys a member of the crew suffers from some minor but incapacitating ailment which disrupts a critical days work - and you can never find a GP in a hostile environment when you need one!
Trauma medicine, on the other hand, is something that you hope you will never need but if it is required then its life saving. Known as the "First Responder" course it covers resuscitation, stemming serious bleeding, administering drips, etc and deals with all traumatic injuries – not only the type that can be caused by bullets and bombs but also by road accidents, which still is the prevalent cause of injury to journalists on assignment.
In September last year a TV crew was interviewing Libyan rebels returning from a front line (some 7km away) when they were suddenly attacked by snipers. The first round fired passed through two rebels, killing them instantly, and then hit the correspondent. The round passed through his arm and entered his chest under his arm pit and was arrested close to his heart. Fortunately there was a trained and qualified consultant with the crew who administered immediate first aid; evacuated the casualty from the fire fight and got him back to a hospital; and then organised for a medivac flight out of Libya to Paris where keyhole surgery took place to remove the round. (Six weeks later the correspondent was back at work!)
Not everyone can take a paramedic with them when it’s dangerous. In the military everyone, not just the medics, gets Trauma medicine training. So the questions you should ask yourself if you intend to report from a War Zone are: Could you save the life of the other member of your team if they got hit? And (maybe more importantly!) could the other members of your team save you if the unthinkable happened?
