Intervention Capacities

START, the humanitarian response team of the Spanish Cooperation

The START (Spanish Aid Response Team) - better known as the "red vests", as this is the official clothing of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation in the field – is made of a field hospital with surgical capacity and a team made up of more than forty professionals from the Spanish public health system plus a dozen logisticians.
 
The START project is part of the Emergency Medical Teams (EMT) initiative led by the World Health Organization (WHO), which aims to standardize the response to humanitarian crises by international medical teams, in order to ensure an optimum level of quality of care for affected populations.
 
START comprises a total of 65 people among health personnel, logistics and coordination staff. The team is prepared to treat between 150 and 200 patients per day for a maximum period of 15 days, in a center with capacity to hospitalize 20 people, equipped with an operating room and all the necessary equipment and resources -instrumental, pharmacy, water and sanitation, waste management, cooking, food, etc.- to be self-sufficient.
 
During the Riwaterex2018 exercise in the Community of Madrid, the hospital and the START team will be deployed at the National School of Civil Protection.