U.S. Forces Increase Training To Provide Shots
Yongsan Garrison, South Korea
As Service Member families continue to move to South Korea there has been positive news for people needing and seeking various shots and immunizations.
A team of Medical personnel and instructors based out of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. has been busy training and giving medical instruction to soldiers in Korea.
Members of the Eighteenth Medical Command, South Korea Forces have nineteen new qualified soldiers able to administer vaccinations.
The five-day course helped change the status of who could receive immunizations. Previously the soldiers were qualified to administer only to those active duty members, not their families or to civilians. As a result of this recent training, the troops are now fully qualified to give vaccinations to both Service Members and their families, too.
Up to this point, medics would travel to Washington, D.C. on temporary duty for a five and a half week course, which would include this training. The full course was about allergies and immunization issues.
But the cost of travel and temporary duty reassignment was not worth it
“We have found that in this case it was far easier to bring the instructors here than to arrange temporary duty for nineteen soldiers we still need in the field.” Said Master Sgt. Desmond Smith. Smith is the spokesman for the Eighteenth Medical Command.
The allergy portion of the course was not covered, but all nineteen students completed the immunization portion successfully.
