At first glance, it looks like a military camp, with these low dark green tents lined up on the parking lot of the Mulhouse hospital (Haut-Rhin), in the Grand-Est, one of the regions hardest hit by the Covid-19 epidemic. The comings and goings of stretcher bearers carrying stretchers to the yellow and red helicopters of civil security, on the take-off zone adjoining the canvas camp, accentuates this impression of disaster. As if a war had paralyzed this city with deserted streets, on this sunny Sunday March 22. The soldiers in khaki uniforms who filter the entrance, provide masks and welcome journalists are more used to being deployed in Opex (external operations) in the Sahel or in the Levant than on the national territory.
The assembly of the EMR (military resuscitation element), with these twenty tents covering an area of 1,000 m2, is nearing completion. “We first installed the equipment for electricity, heating, water supply, installed the oxygen concentrators, so as to guarantee to the patients, thirty in total, the same conditions of care and at the permanent hospital, next to it, "explains Commander" Nicolas "(for security reasons, soldiers in operation only give their first name and rank), backpack with his printed Rhesus B + .
Chief of operations of the Medical Regiment, he provides logistics. Then come the 30 resuscitation-ventilation beds, high-tech structures unrelated to the picot beds of soldiers in the field. Then heart monitors, ventilators, syringe pumps, etc.
A hundred medical staff from military hospitals
"Then we will have to test all of this, check the actions in the event of an electrical or oxygen failure," explains the main doctor "Antoine", from the army's health service. Once everything is checked, we will welcome patients from the hospital. They were first resuscitated there urgently, and are in the improvement phase, but still need several days, even weeks, for ventilation.
VIDEO. Coronavirus: in Mulhouse, the army deploys its field hospital
Here, the mission is to relieve the Mulhouse hospital, under high tension in this epidemic focus of the coronavirus. This structure, light, will therefore not receive the heaviest cases, that is to say patients suffering, in addition to Covid-19, from serious pathologies.
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The women and men in the fatigues will give way to the hundred or so caregivers - including ten anesthetists-resuscitators, specialized nurses, nursing assistants, logistical agents - posted from the eight military hospitals in France, who will work here. "Among them, two hygienist nurses who had been deployed in our structure in Guinea against the Ebola epidemic in 2015: it is up to them to ensure that we do not get infected between caregivers", says "Nicolas".
"Patient safety before media pressure"
But why are the patients not already there, facing the emergency? The reference to the Chinese with their hospital "set up in ten days" annoys the military. "It is not the same thing, here it is a resuscitation hospital, you should know that the Mulhouse hospital itself only has 40 of these specialized beds," retorted the doctor.
"This operation is a first, in Opex we are doing surgery on war wounded, in lighter antennas, in three tents," he insists. We had to identify the equipment, transport it from our stocks in Orléans (Loiret) , fit out the premises - a car park on a slight slope -, test and retest, all in five days! We put patient safety before media pressure ”.
He could have added: and politicians, as the announcement of this EMR earlier this week by the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron triggered a very strong demand from the population. The five children of the commander "Nicolas", 48 years old, told him their "pride" to see him lead this "mission that he would never have imagined".