Field hospital set up on former RAF airfield in North Yorkshire in preparation for 'large disaster'

Independent charity UK-Med has set up a field hospital on the former RAF Dishforth airfield near Ripon – with a team from the UN’s World Health Organisation coming from Geneva to assess it and hopefully give it their seal of approval.

The facility has all the functions of a small cottage hospital, but has to be able to set up in a field and be self-sufficient for power, water, lighting, toilets and waste management, and more. It will be staffed by volunteer health professionals, who can be called up with 12 hours notice, and the facility can be used anywhere in the world.

CEO David Wightwick said: “The first patient can be seen within hours of us arriving on scene. The first tents can go up in minutes. The complicated bit is the power supply and water – as is taking it down.”

The charity has also been busy setting up a surgical unit in eastern Ukraine, which is attached to a hospital that has been attacked and targeted by Russian troops.

Staffed by NHS surgeons, it is due to take its first war-wounded patient today.

Mr Wightwick said the field hospital they have been testing in Yorkshire is mainly for primary health care – treating walking wounded after an earthquake or a cyclone, for example, but with the ability to stabilise more serious cases and send them for secondary care.

Or it could be needed in countries where people have been displaced through drought – as is happening in the Horn of Africa.

Mr Wightwick said a large disaster was “overdue”: “We’ve not had a large earthquake for some years.

“Typically for a large sudden onset disaster you can expect one every 12 to 18 months. The Mozambique cyclone (Idai - which caused a humanitarian crisis in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, and left more than 1,300 people dead) was in 2019 - so we are overdue.”

The charity, which is based in Manchester University, was set up in 1988 by a small group of NHS doctors and now has a staff of close to 60.