ASEAN militaries to share medical capabilities
Rabby Pramudatama, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | World | Tue, April 24 2012, 2:51 PM
Indonesia is hosting a high ranking military meeting in Jakarta, the 2nd ASEAN Chiefs Military Medicine Conference (ACMMC) 2012, which is intended to bolster member countries’ military capabilities in handling multinational threats such as disaster and epidemic diseases.
“Based on our last agreement, each member country should have an inventory list of their medical capabilities which could be used to handle threats such as disaster or epidemic disease,” the Indonesian Military chief Adm. Agus Suhartono said on Tuesday.
He said to inventory capability was the main principal for the member countries to strengthen their cooperation.
The first ACMMC was held in Vietnam in 2011.
Agus told The Jakarta Post the capabilities that should be inventoried included member countries’ human resources capabilities, equipment, as well as a list of medicine and antivirus.
Epidemic diseases, such as the bird flu H5N1 virus, are considered non-traditional threats for the military because of its latent and lethal effect.
Such a virus-attack occurred in 2005 when the disease plagued, Asia causing the deaths of hundreds victims.
