MSF Spain, the Spanish arm of the international organization Medecins Sans Frontieres that delivers emergency medical aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, healthcare exclusion and natural or man-made disasters, has just completed a new technical guide for a modular operating facility in emergency situations, coordinated and edited by guest professor Paul Cabrera of MSF and former student Martina Manna.
Adding to their list of publications and practical manuals, MSF Spain’s Set-up Guide for a Deployable Modular Operating Facility (DMOF) addresses the need for a rapidly-deployable and fully functional operating facility to cover surgical needs in emergency scenarios involving surgical care provision, which is critical in areas where access to surgical care is restricted due to the context and/or geographical inaccessibility.
The DMOF offers two different options of building technologies: one with locally-available materials and a second entirely with rapidly-deployable prefabricated elements. Designed to be either assembled or built on-site for a defined period of time to allow the immediate provision of surgery, it is composed of a soft operating room in the form of a PVC tent, within a more durable hard-shelled exterior (semi-permanent structure either prefabricated or with locally available materials), to create an Operating Block facility that can be used in remote and under-resourced environments.
The guide was edited by Paul Cabrera, architect and technical referent for Construction and Sheltering at MSF Spain, along with former student Martina Manna, who completed her internship with the organization last summer and is currently employed there as “Technical designer for Water and Sanitation.”
Previous MSF publications to which former students have contributed include the Small Constructions Manual.