Dominica's Office of Disaster Management hosts emergency field hospital training to prepare first responders for national disasters, running from April 20–24.
Dominica: The Office of Disaster Management has organised a four-day emergency field hospital deployment training exercise from April 20, 2026, to April 24, 2026, to ensure preparedness in times of national disasters and health crises. Close to 30 emergency services personnel including, police officers, cadets, and the fire and ambulance department are participating in the programme.
On Monday, April 20, 2026, the Office of Disaster Management launched a four-day training programme at the Botanic Gardens in Dominica.
This programme is taking place through the collaboration of the United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), with the lead instructor being Jorge Ortiz of Western Shelter System.
According to reports, 30 individuals from the Ministry of Health, the Office of Disaster Management (ODM), the Dominica Fire and Ambulance Service, and the Dominica Cadet Corps are undergoing this training as they learn how to build hospital fields, how to handle the medical and life-support technology inside and how to store the equipment for future use.
The team has built field hospitals with 40 hospital beds, eight on each tent. The hospitals have air conditioning inside as well as curtains to separate the private and public patients.
In an interview with the media, lead instructor Jorge Ortiz shared the importance of this exercise, explaining that an emergency can happen at any time and that waiting for three or four years can cause some to forget the knowledge learnt.
You need to be ready for whenever the emergency calls which we don't know when that will be. So, the more you practice on how to set this up and how to use it, the more knowledge you're going to have when the time comes to actually being able to use it, explained the lead instructor.
Moreover, Sherlon James, the Officer for Disaster Management also elaborated further, stating that the training programme is part of the Government’s efforts to strengthen national preparedness and response capacity.
What we aim at doing is to build capacity among the organization so when we have a real event in terms of mass casualty or disaster, that these participants are the ones that will be called upon to do the real thing— that is front line to deploy this field hospital, he stated.