A Modern-Day Trojan Horse
- 2008 May 1
During the mythological Trojan War, neither the Greeks nor the Trojans seemed capable of winning. The Greeks won many important battles, but couldn’t breach the walls of Troy. One day, after a major battle, Odysseus of Ithaca, one of the Greek kings, came up with an idea that some of his followers initially thought impossible. He wanted his soldiers to build a large, hollowed out, wooden horse big enough to conceal and transport a group of Greek soldiers. Then he wanted the horse mounted on wheels so it could become part of a carefully crafted plan to rapidly deploy resources into the city of Troy, an area thought to be out of their reach.
We all know what happened next: Under cover of darkness, the Trojan horse was wheeled into position outside the gates of Troy; a lone Greek soldier convinced the Trojans to bring the horse into their city, and the Greek soldiers inside the horse surprised their enemies and killed the Trojan guards. A huge battle ensued, after which the Greeks claimed victory thanks to their Trojan horse, a large, specialized resource strategically positioned and poised for action at a moment’s notice.
This supplement to the Journal of Emergency Medical Services (JEMS) will introduce you to the innovative Charlie’s Horse® Deployment System and the MERF™ (Medical Emergency Response Facility), a medical response system that, similar to the Trojan horse, delivers crucial resources to areas where they’re critically needed, deploys those resources rapidly in any location and does so by design using a minimal workforce. In addition, many components of the MERF can be used at special and heavily populated events to provide high-quality medical care to those in need.
The Charlie’s Horse Deployment System, a series of transfer and deployment canisters, carts, litter platforms and adaptable accessories, in combination with the MERF concept, corrects outdated or inadequate equipment and response doctrines used in the past and truly meets the out-of-hospital needs of today’s military and disaster situations.
The MERF is a multi-functional, advanced capability system, a much refined version of the famous M*A*S*H system deployed during the Korean War. Each MERF is designed as a rapid-movement, rapid-set-up, 10-bed facility that comes complete with all the equipment needed to staff an operating room, ICU and triage/treatment/ holding facility.
The MERF’s new approach (protocol) to equipment and personnel deployment involves the use of specially designed cargo canisters and multi-functional, low-friction transfer devices that can be easily moved by one person and utilized in multiple ways once unloaded at an incident.
Most importantly, the MERF represents a unique and powerful partnership between Charlie’s Horse and 10 of the nation’s most respected medical and disaster-response manufacturers. Working together, this group provides a system that allows end-users to bring state-of-the-art medical, trauma and critical-care capabilities to any size incident in a short time period. What’s more, they can have all necessary equipment set up and operational within one hour.-
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