Diseases and Non-Battle Injuries (DNBI) in HUN Missions Based on EPIHUN Reports

Abstract

The Medical Service of the Hungarian Defence Forces (HDF) has been playing and taking an important role in the elimination and medical stabilization of several regional crisis areas since 1991. These medical protection and “back-ups” literally mean the medical support of our military forces take part in different tasks besides this fulfilling the special tasks of preventive medicine. The medical data collected from the different tasks and missions have been gathered systematically in order to be informative. From 2008 on we manage data collection with a real-time surveillance report system, the so called EPIHUN (Hungarian Epidemiological and Patient Turnover Report), which have been collected from different aspects and analysed from force health protection aspects. With the DNBI data from the system the authors are analysing the preventable diseases morbidity state and tendencies of the EUFOR (European Union Force), KFOR (Kosovo Force), MFO (Multinational Force and Observers) and UNFICYP (United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus) missions on a 2013 data base. It could be surprising that the morbidity data are very similar to the values seen among military collectives living in barracks during the conscription era of the armed forces. Most DNBI are acute respiratory diseases and diseases of the digestive system, which is important information in medical preparation training before deployment.