PHL military personnel join PACANGEL

From the Philippine News Agency (Jun 6): PHL military personnel join PACANGEL

Six armed forces, including those of the Philippines, are now providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief training to their counterparts at the Papua New Guinea Defense Force.

This is part of the ongoing Pacific Angel (PACANGEL) 15-4 exercises which started June 1 and scheduled to end on the 8th.

Pacific Angel participants deployed doctors, dentists, plumbers and planners to Goroka, a town of 20,000 people and part of the country's Eastern Highland Province.

These personnel came from the Armed Forces of United States, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

The value of the exchanges taking place in tropical medicine, public health and engineering encourages partner- countries to build relationships through these various programs, preserving peace and stability in the region.

PACANGEL Papua New Guinea mission commander US Air Force Lt. Col. Jim Fowlew is taking the complexity of managing peacetime in Papua New Guinea and giving it a structure that might withstand worse.

"We're investing in sustainability," Pacific Air Forces US Air Force command surgeon Col. Joseph Anderson said.

The operation helps Papua New Guinea military and civil health groups recognize and cope with the complexity of a disaster like the typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes and floods characteristic of the South Pacific, US Air Force Lt. Col. Courtney Finkbeiner, a nurse and leader of the operation's medical subject-matter expert exchange teams, said.

"Disaster is chaotic enough," she said. "All of the [Papua New Guinea] medical professionals know how to care for patients; we only try to show them how we organize in a crisis."

Appreciating that context of mutual reliance and assistance is critical to understanding the aid picture in the South Pacific, emphasizing cooperation among countries.

"We all have different outlooks, but in a situation like Pacific Angel, we have to consult with each other," Philippines Medical Corps doctor Capt. Donald Palmer said.

"We take our [national] experiences and turn them into multilateral ability, where each country can help the other."

Missions like PACANGEL help local government and international aid agencies respond more quickly to crises within a country's borders and assume control of recovery more quickly in their wake, enabling them to better use the equipment, training and connections they already have.

For instance, Pacific Angel missions to Nepal in recent years helped more than 9,000 people in that country.

More critically, the missions brought together the Nepalese, American, Australian and other military and civilian aid agencies who later formed the joint task force that responded to the devastation following the earthquake near Kathmandu weeks ago.

For many of the Papua New Guinea Defense Force members, all the disaster training and activity resonate strongly with experience.

This summer marks the eighth iteration of PACANGEL. The teams will be training in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief through June 8.

http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=1&sid=&nid=1&rid=769632