German company transfers mobile field hospital to Ukraine

Rheinmetall has supplied Ukraine with a mobile field hospital.

In September 2022, the German Ministry of Defence awarded Group subsidiary Rheinmetall Mobile Systeme GmbH, or RMS, the contract for the hospital and related training support. The order is worth around €9 million, Caliber.Az reports, citing the company’s website.

This state-of-the-art field hospital encompasses 32 beds, including eight intensive care beds, an operating room with associated sterilization facilities, diagnostic imaging technology (x-ray and computer tomography), a laboratory, a pharmacy, and administrative and personnel tracts. It therefore complies with NATO Role 2 medical support standards. In two additional deliveries scheduled for late 2023 and early 2024, RMS will also be supplying Ukraine with two high-mobility medical support facilities.

Besides the field hospital itself, Rheinmetall has also furnished Ukraine with the necessary transport assets. A total of ten truck/trailer combinations carried the twenty containers to their destination.

The hospital is a complete autarkic medical support unit. It not only includes medical modules in expandable containers and tents, but also an independent power generation capability and facilities for producing medical gases. The hospital also features its own water supply, including treatment and decontamination as well as billets with sanitation modules for patients and personnel. The high quality of the system is apparent in the exact details.

For example, the water supply network is heated and the sensitive computer tomograph in the container is spring-loaded with an elaborate transport system. It can therefore be safely transported by land, sea or air, and is ready to operate upon arrival. Designed for maximum operational mobility, all of the systems and equipment in the hospital can be reused repeatedly.

The transfer of the mobile field hospital was a two-step operation: First, ten Ukrainian soldiers took part in a 14-day training course to learn how to assemble, disassemble and operate the hospital. The formal handover to Ukraine then took place at a specified location.

RMS staff members trained the Ukrainian troops in a trade fair hall in Friedrichshafen in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. Half of the Ukrainian team already had a medical background, and the other half had prior technical training. To take part in the two-week course, they travelled directly from their area of operations in Ukraine to Germany.