WAC SMOs Conference: 2015 Curtain Raiser SMOs (Senior Medical Officers) Annual Conference is being conducted at Headquarters Western Air Command (WAC), New Delhi on 03 and 04 Jul 2015. About 50 Medical Officers; all heads of Field Hospitals and Medicare centres of AF Stations under WAC will arrive in the National capital to review and plan the operational preparedness and delivery capability of the health care programmes of WAC. Air Mshl Rajan Chaudhry AVSM VSM PHS Director General Medical Services (Air) will be the Chief Guest and Air Mshl B Suresh AVSM VM Senior Air Staff Officer WAC will be the Guest of Honour. Dr Gayatri Vyas Mahindroo Direcor NABH (National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Health care providers) has been invited to deliver the Keynote address on Accreditation of Station Medicare Centres, which provide primary health care services to all personnel and their families in the Air Force. The medical services in the Air Force are progressing towards paperless offices. Implementation of MEDNET- an advance software application will be one of the major agendas for discussion. A concerted effort will be made to iron out the road blocks being encountered while implementing this high-end software developed for the Station Medicare Centres (SMCs). Rapid Action Medical Team (RAMT) had carried out outstanding relief work in Nepal as a part of Op Maitri after the recent earthquake. The SOPs for mass disaster situations will be revisited and streamlined on the basis of lessons learnt after the recent deployment. The delegates will also be demonstrated the deployment of the tent based hospital on ground. IAF medical services are rapidly evolving from a mere Air Evacuation so far to the Air Ambulance role now. A field visit to AF Station Hindan, the premier transport Base of IAF, has been planned where delegates will be demonstrated mass casualty evacuation procedures on C-130 and C-17. Also, a lecture cum demonstration of the indigenously designed PTU (Patient Transport Unit) which enables IAF to transfer a critical patient from one ICU to ICU at another location will be given. Aeromedical training is another critical area of focus and the strategy to augment aeromedical training for aircrew will come under discussion. The delegates will be taken to the Aeromedical Training Centre to orient them to the OPTRAM (Operational Training in Aerospace Medicine) training schedules for aircrew as well to familiarise them to DISO (Disorientation Simulator) and NVG (Night Vision Goggles) Lab. This would bring the required synergy between efforts of the medical branch in matching up with modern and advanced operational systems of the IAF. SKM/DP
