It Is Especially Important to Save Lives

Vigorous Warrior, the world’s largest-scale military medical exercise is going on in Bakonykúti, Hungary between 22 April and 11 May. The event organized by the NATO Centre of Excellence for Military Medicine (NATO MILMED COE) involves the troops of 33 member and partner countries of the Alliance; ten percent of the training audience is Hungarians. The special feature of the event held in Hungary after 13 years is that it is running simultaneously with the Clean Care 2024 (CC24) CBRN defence exercise. At the exercise, Tamás Vargha recalled the significance of the professional experiences accumulated during the past few weeks.

It is common knowledge but still important to emphasise that we live in a time of war. Even here, in Europe, moreover, in our neighbourhood, there is an armed conflict going on, as well as in several other parts of the world. “Therefore, it is reassuring to see how many nations, partners and organizations answered the call of the NATO Centre of Excellence for Military Medicine.” There is no other similarly large-scale military medical exercise in the world. We can take particular advantage of this as the importance of military operations other than war has significantly grown recently – said the parliamentary state secretary.

The deputy minister underlined the importance of the Hungarian tradition in military medicine and gave thanks to the Hungarian personnel, who operated their own ROLE-2 field hospital and other mobile medical treatment facilities at the exercise. “It cannot be said often enough, together we are strong, together we are stronger. We fully recognize the significance of your contribution to this exercise.” Here we are performing our basic task, the protection of our countries and we also demonstrate our capabilities to our opponents – said Tamás Vargha.

The main objective of this year’s Exercise Vigorous Warrior is to develop a common understanding of methods applied in each country, to clarify the differences in terminology and to get ready to meet modern challenges. The elements of the latter includes providing mobility to field hospitals and several experiments such as testing an epidemic detection system. To strengthen civil-military cooperation (CIMIC), representatives of the Hungarian National Ambulance Service, the Red Cross and the Police are also participating in the exercise.