Training its teams in real conditions before they leave for conflict zones or areas affected by natural disasters is the objective of the NGO Doctors Without Borders which inaugurated this Wednesday its Jacques Pinel training center in Mérignac, near Bordeaux. The 10,000 m2 site is close to the MSF logistics platforminaugurated in 2015 and strategically positioned near Bordeaux Mérignac airport.
The opening of the training center, delayed by the Covid-19 epidemic, did not take place until autumn 2021. “It is the first training center in France, there are other platforms but not as complete, explains Mélissa Blum, responsible for this new structure. We have 60 beds, 80 catering places, four plenary training rooms and seven technical training rooms with platforms built as in the field, to learn how to set up a hospital from scratch. »
Some 500 people from MSF teams around the world were trained in 2021. “We thought for a moment that the site was oversized, but it is already a victim of its own success,” comments Thierry Allafort-Duverger, director general of MSF France. Lately, it was necessary to arbitrate between different formations. »
“A pond as a teaching tool”
The center offers a variety of training courses (in the medical, paramedical, pharmacy, logistics, supply, administration, purchasing, human resources, etc. sectors) aimed at humanitarian professions, ranging from one to two weeks maximum. To enable the teams to be as operational as possible, many simulation exercises are offered on the logistics side. “We have a pond which is an educational tool for learning how to make drinking water for the mobile clinics”, explains Mélissa Blum. A huge hangar simulates, for example, the assembly of an operating theatre. Several other technical equipment such as solar panels, drilling, water tower, waste treatment area, latrines, etc. are made available to trainees.
A telecoms room can also be used to practice setting up electricity in a hospital because the teams sometimes arrive in areas where there is nothing. In the mechanical workshop sits the famous MSF 4X4 and next to it the “school chassis”. Some are trained to repair the most common breakdowns on the machine, still equipped with very few electronics, so as not to find themselves stranded once on a mission.
“The opening of this center makes sense because MSF Logistics also has a training mission and that of providing its expertise to the teams on the ground so that they can improve their responses to the populations with whom they intervene, explains Laurent Sury, General Manager of MSF Logistics. We can thus establish a link with the places of intervention, which is not always easy. On the site, an innovation component also exists with, for example, at the moment, a test on solar panels.
This new center was financed by private donations.