BLU-MED Mobile Facility Set Up in Kenya

DADAAB, Kenya, Dec. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- A BLU-MED mobile field hospital was recently set up by AmeriCares in Kenya at the new Kambioos Refugee Camp. Once it becomes operational, the hospital is expected to provide surgical and recovery capability for pediatric and maternity patients from the local Somalian refugee population. The hospital will be staffed and operated by the International Medical Corps and is expected to be utilized for several years until a permanent structure can be constructed. The medical facility has an inpatient capacity of 60 beds and will provide access to health care for an indigent population of approximately 90,000.

This same BLU-MED facility had previously provided 5 years of service following the 2005 Pakistan earthquake for another AmeriCares project in the mountain village of Banna. During that period, over half a million patients received treatment by Save the Children - Pakistan, the organization responsible for operating that facility. Upon completion of that mission, the portable hospital was sent back to the United States, cleaned, repacked, and subsequently deployed again to Kenya.

"You can still see some notes written by the medics in Pakistan on the walls of this facility," observes BLU-MED's President Dr. Don Diesel. "It's gratifying to see evidence of these same shelters, having endured 4 winters in the mountains of Pakistan, continuing to provide healthcare now in the East African desert." In recent years, AmeriCares has also established BLU-MED field hospitals following the earthquake disasters of Haiti, Chile, and China.

Unfortunately, at this time security incidents in the Dadaab region have severely restricted response measures to only lifesaving interventions. The Government of Kenya and international actors continue to process for solutions to improve the security and service delivery.

Other BLU-MED facilities in East Africa include locations in Asmara, Eritrea and Garissa, Kenya. Both of these 25-bed facilities are owned and operated by the Emirates World Humanitarian Mobile Hospital and each treats about 150 patients per day.

BLU-MED Response Systems, a division of Alaska Structures, Inc., is The World's Leader in Deployable Medical Facilities™. BLU-MED provides turnkey, portable shelter-based solutions for a wide range of applications including full-service hospitals with alternate EOC, CBRNE, triage, isolation, immunization, decontamination, emergency rooms (ER), operating rooms (OR), intensive care units (ICU), burn unit, and mortuaries, mobile field hospitals, alternate command centers, temporary housing and base camp requirements for hospital expansion, surge capacity, and emergency disaster preparedness and response. BLU-MED also offers support services including a full range of medical equipment packages, vendor managed inventory, field deployment, and training & exercise support. For more information, visit http://www.BLU-MED.com.

Alaska Structures (AKS) designs, engineers and delivers the highest quality fabric building systems for extreme environments. Since it was founded in 1975, over 50,000 AKS shelters have been tested and proven in over 55 countries around the world, including more than 28,000 Alaska Military Shelters and 6,500 Alaska Environmental Control Units in Afghanistan and Iraq. For more information, visit http://www.AlaskaStructures.com.

Contact: Don Diesel, President, (314) 565-8248

This press release was issued through eReleases(R).  For more information, visit eReleases Press Release Distribution at http://www.ereleases.com.

SOURCE BLU-MED Response Systems