The Ministry of National Defense (MND) yesterday detailed efforts to boost the nation’s wartime medical resilience, including a plan to set up a blood donation management unit.
Defense officials made the remarks in a report submitted to lawmakers ahead of Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo’s (顧立雄) question-and-answer session at the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee today.
The ministry said it had made efforts to enhance the military’s stockpiles, equipment repair and maintenance, digital communications, and battlefield medicine capabilities.
Photo courtesy of the 8th Army Corps
The armed forces have also enhanced its communications with the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the National Fire Agency, county-level public health agencies and hospitals to create a wartime health system, it said.
The military last year conducted seven joint exercises with the civil government and private hospitals, and plans to hold seven more this year, it said.
The planned exercises would focus on certifying hospitals’ ability to stabilize the injured before their transfer to military care and send surgical units to the outlying islands, it said.
Photo: Chen Kuan-pei, Taipei Times
The armed forces by December would found a national blood donation unit, the first organization of its kind, and establish blood banks at hospitals in central, southern and eastern Taiwan, it said.
The MND said next year it would launch the tri-service blood program, a centralized blood supply system to standardize blood policy and operating procedures to secure blood supplies in wartime.
It said it bolstered medical services’ chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear warfare capabilities by certifying military hospitals in Kaohsiung and Hualien.
Military medical services would be able to provide basic care in case of chemical, biological or nuclear attacks anywhere in Taiwan, it said.
The MND and the Ministry of Health and Welfare in 2023 established a reserve capacity that could be activated to provide medical care to wounded military personnel and civilians during an armed conflict, it said.
Officials are creating mobilization plans for nurses and caregivers to deal with non-critically injured civilians at first aid stations across 300 townships, it said.
In other news, the Presidential Office’s Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee said it is on Thursday next week to hold its first-ever field exercise in Tainan.
The exercise would test Taiwan’s capability to respond to a natural disaster that could severely damaging its infrastructure, such as an earthquake and tsunami, it said.
Cabinet officials, the Tainan City Government and the Presidential Office would participate in the exercise, it said.
The committee said its mission is to implement the policy of President William Lai’s administration to strengthen the nation’s resilience against threats posed by natural disasters and authoritarian expansionism.
Improving the coordination between central and local governments, and the private and public sectors is key to make Taiwan’s national defense, civil society, natural disaster response and democracy resilient, it said.
The committee said it would convene its third meeting and hold a news conference in Tainan after the exercise.
The exercise would feature simulations to evacuate people, provide shelter, and establish field hospitals and aid stations, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said.
The exercise would have components A and B, which would be conducted at Tainan’s Nanning High School and in front of Anping Harbor tourist information center, she said.
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