Amidst all the heartbreaking stories out of Haiti these past two weeks, I was impressed to see that Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres) was deploying an inflatable hospital. An inflatable hospital? What a great idea!
Here’s how it works. Air is pumped into the columns and beams that support the structure, which are made of heavy material like that found in inflatable lifeboats. Air is also pumped into walls and roofs made of two layers of nylon about 18 inches apart when inflated. The air gives them stiffness and insulating qualities.
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FSI North America produces the inflatable hospital, although they aren’t the only manufacturer selling such buildings. It is listed in their catalog under Multi Purpose Rapid Deploy Shelters. The buildings they sell range from 100 square feet to 1,850 square feet. For the Doctors Without Borders hospital, several buildings are tied together. Once they are properly tied down, they can withstand winds of up to 70 miles per hour. The nylon material is chemical resistant and fire retardant. Each unit comes packed in a bundle about the size of a desk and takes only minutes to set up. The buildings are packed with all the tools necessary to set them up plus a repair kit. Watch how they put the hospital up in Haiti.
Shelters like these can be used for temporary housing and offices as well as hospitals. The relatively small packing size means they fit into a cargo hold rather easy. A shipload of small inflatable shelters could provide shelter, privacy, and an address for many people left homeless by the earthquake in Haiti as well as wars and other disasters wherever they occur.
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A company in the UK offfers a similar structure that is made from concrete:
http://www.concretecanvas.co.uk/
posted by Ryan on 1-25-2010 at 9:19 am
A company in the UK offers a similar structure that is made from concrete:
http://www.concretecanvas.co.uk/
posted by Ryan on 1-25-2010 at 9:21 am
That’s great! They can be ready to, uh, operate, in no time.
posted by BassMan on 1-25-2010 at 11:01 am
That’s wonderful.
posted by Sara in AL on 1-25-2010 at 12:45 pm
Doctors without Borders rocks…their awesomeness never ceases to amaze me.
posted by Justine on 1-25-2010 at 9:45 pm
The manufacturer does advertise the ability of these structures to withstand high winds, but in reality, this only assures that they will “bounce back” after the winds have died down. I have worked with these same shelters in Pohang, South Korea, and in a tropical depression (winds were 45-55 mph with gusts up to 62), they flop around like a spastic jello mold during an earthquake. Do not place anything against the walls. In addition, water weight will collapse the roofs (not all of it will shed off the top), we had to repeatedly push wide floor brooms down the inside of the ceilings to ensure we weren’t buried in a avalanche of plastic sheeting.
posted by okinawadato on 1-26-2010 at 1:16 am
For almost two weeks I was amazed that no mention had been made of inflatable hospitals in Haiti. I only recently found information on the Internet about the MSF inflatable hospitals used in Pakistan and finally being deployed to Haiti.
In 1965 I was in the United States Army Medical Service Corps and stationed at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
During the summer of 1965, I was in charge of demonstrating a completely self-contained inflatable hospital to, as I remember, members of the American Society of Applied Physics, highly ranked United States military officers, and highly positioned federal government officials.
As I remember, and that was 45 years ago, those inflatable “Quonset hut†units were 20 feet wide and 60 feet long. The units were designed so that they could be attached directly to adjacent in-line units or at 90 degrees by using an optional fabric connecting chamber, which also could be used as an entrance air lock or decontamination chamber.
The units or “huts†were made up of contiguous 14†or 16†diameter tubes. Each “tube†was independently attached to manifolds on both sides of the unit, which insured the unit would remain erect in the event one or more “tubes†were punctured. There was no interior or exterior supporting structure or loose fabric. Heated or cooled air was delivered to each unit by flexible hoses attached to a fabric semi-circular zippered-opening manifold, which ran lengthwise inside the top of the unit.
Each 20’ x 60’ inflatable unit was packed in a 4’ x 4’ x 4’ reusable shipping container.
The gasoline powered inflation pump and electrical generator module was also packed in a 4’ x 4’ x 4’ reusable shipping container. The third shipping container contained the heating and air conditioning unit. And finally, the fourth shipping container held all the supplies and equipment necessary to do in-the-field emergency surgical procedures.
Although I did not see the fifth module, I was told it contained the portable x-ray unit and film developing equipment. All modules (filled shipping containers) weighed less that 400 pounds and were designed to be lifted and moved by four men.
These modules were designed to be delivered by pickup-size trucks and helicopters and, as I remember, could also be parachute dropped from transport aircraft.
Essentially all you had to add was gasoline and doctors. Beds were optional and the packing containers could be used as operating tables under extreme conditions.
I personally helped set up this demonstration hospital in the gymnasium of the Walter Reed Army Hospital. Since we could not run a gasoline engine inside the building we used a small, very old household vacuum cleaner to inflate the unit. The whole set-up took four people less than two hours, not the 48 hours that MSF inflatable hospital requires.
It is shocking to me that this technology, which is more than 45 years old, is only now being “rediscoveredâ€. I suspect that the United States military has these Inflatable Hospitals packed away and forgotten in a warehouse somewhere.
It could be, however, since military evacuation of the wounded has improved so much in 45 years that patient stabilization and transportation to permanent medical facilities has made these Inflatable Hospitals obsolete for our military.
Thanks to MSF for all the good work you are doing everywhere.
posted by Ron Akron on 2-18-2010 at 1:06 am