The government Thursday launched a mobile hospital in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province, to deploy medical aid in critical conditions such as war or natural disasters.

Officials from various government agencies will attend a tape-cutting ceremony Friday in Cheonan for the official launch, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the National Medical Center, the two hosting agencies.

The mobile hospital, which houses up to 100 beds, is equipped with all essential facilities found in general hospitals to allow monitoring and treatment of trauma patients at the disaster site.

The mobile hospital in complete deployment

The functional module layout will allow the medical team to customize hospital operations to the disaster situation, the ministries said. Facilities can be restructured into a small unit to dispatch help quickly or into a large one to perform surgeries in a large-scale or long-term disaster situation.

“The mobile hospital has superior facilities and equipment infrastructure comparable to those of developed countries,” said Kang Do-tae, the head of the ministry’s health and welfare policy division. “We expect that it will play a central role in on-site emergency medical care in case of a large-scale national disaster.”

The government will provide education and training for Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMAT) and emergency medical practitioners, Kang said. It will also consider actively preparing for possible casualties in large-scale accidents, he added.

Meanwhile, a total of 250 people from various disaster-related emergency medical centers nationwide gathered to participate in a government-launched training program near Cheonan Thursday, the ministries said.

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