Michiel Voet: The Price Tag of a Whole Blood Strategy
Michiel Voet, Military Medical Logistics Advisor at LS Innoventa bv, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“The price tag of a Whole blood / Spray Dried Plasma strategy.
In modern operations, firepower gets a lot of attention. It seems sexy.
Tomohawks, Storm Shadows, brand new tanks,… We love to talk about it.
Something we barely talk about, however a strategic asset, is blood. Blood keeps our soldiers alive.
But what is the price tag of blood compared to the sexy assets mentioned above.
Let’s put numbers on something we rarely quantify.
1.Scenario (ballpark model):
- 1,000 soldiers deployed
- 1 medic per 10 soldiers
- 3 Role 1 / CCPs
- 2 forward surgical assets
- 10% WIA/KIA rate over 100 days, Average 8 units per casualty transfused, 35% transfusion rate.
2.To ensure golden hour resuscitation capability, we model a system built on:
- Spray-Dried Plasma (every soldier carries 1)
- Whole Blood stocks on R1/CCP/surgical level
- Blood transfusion kits (Pré screened walking blood bank as an Emergency Option)
- Blood warmers and consumables
- Golden Hour Boxes plus reserve
- Cold-chain blood refrigerators plus reserve
- Drone based emergency blood delivery plus reserve
3.Initial deployment cost: €1,893,990
4.Sustainment per following 100 days: €459,874
Ballpark 1,9M€ to give 1,000 soldiers access to modern damage control resuscitation strategy.
Put differently:
That’s roughly €1900 per soldier, to dramatically reduce preventable deaths from hemorrhage, still the Number 1 cause of potentially survivable battlefield fatalities. €1900 per soldier will make sure more of our guys get home…
In comparrison. A Storm Shadow costs about €1 million, a Tomahawk somewhere between €1,2M and €1,8M, a Challenger 2 tank around €8M.
Surely cost can’t be the limiting factor in implementing a proper DCR blood strategy… Certainly when ‘not having blood’ is a limiting factor in your operations.
Anyone else tried to calculate this?
Stay Critical.”
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