The chairman of the Committee of the Chiefs of Military Medical Services in NATO (COMEDS), LtGen Gérard Nedellec, paid an official visit to Hungary upon invitation of the director of the NATO Centre of Excellence for Military Medicine (MILMED COE) from 11 to 14 March 2013.

During his visit the chairman of the highest military medical decision-making body of the Alliance was received by the Deputy Chief of Defence of the Hungarian Defence Forces, LtGen Zoltán Orosz, furthermore he visited the HDF Health Centre, Military Hospital.

On 12 March, at the first stopover in his visit the French general was received by Col. Dr. István Kopcsó, director of MILMED COE, who provided him a briefing on the activities of the Centre accredited by NATO in 2009. At the meeting they also discussed the importance of adequate and sustainable medical support to NATO missions thus improving the Alliance’s military capabilities. As a kind of „think tank”, the Budapest based MILMED COE - currently counting 7 member nations - contributes to the medical support of operations by providing knowledge and expertise and conducting courses and trainings among others. The Centre’s core task is to enhance multinational solutions and facilitate interoperability between the military medical services in NATO. Moreover the director informed LtGen Nedellec about the upcoming enlargement of the Centre since the joining of the United Kingdom and the United States is in progress and some other nations are interested as well. Besides the meeting the COMEDS chairman gave a presentation on future challenges for NATO’s military medical support to the participants of two COMEDS groups, the Military Healthcare Working Group and the Joint Medical Communications and Information Systems (MedCIS) Expert Panel (EP) and the Telemedicine Expert Team (TMED EP), also meeting this week at MILMED COE.

(Ministry of Defence)