A temperature ‘tablet’ to watch troopers? What the SAF is doing to fight heatstroke

SINGAPORE: Think about ingesting a tiny gadget that offers real-time updates of your physique temperature. It’s, in truth, a scene that’s already being performed out amongst chosen troopers within the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), as a part of efforts to mitigate the impression of warmth stress.

Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen on Wednesday (Jan 11) officiated the launch of the Warmth Resilience and Efficiency Centre (HRPC), which goals to handle the “long-term challenges of sustaining human efficiency amid rising temperatures within the area and the world”.

Positioned on the premises of the Nationwide College of Singapore (NUS) at the Yong Bathroom Lin Faculty of Drugs, the centre is a collaboration between SAF, NUS and DSO Nationwide Laboratories. 

It is going to leverage best-in-class native and international experience, together with thermal physiologists and local weather researchers, the three organisations stated in a joint information launch on Wednesday.

WHY THE NEED FOR THE HRPC

The HRPC was first announced at the Committee of Supply debate in March 2022. 

“It’s apparent that SAF wants this facility to make it safer for our troopers to coach and function within the scorching humid local weather of Singapore and elsewhere,” stated Dr Ng on Wednesday.

In 2018, a full-time nationwide serviceman died nearly two weeks after displaying signs of heat injury following a quick march at Bedok Camp.

An external panel review that year discovered that the SAF’s warmth damage measures had been “usually sound and aligned with prevalent business and overseas army practices”. In its report, the whole variety of warmth accidents declined from 27 in 2012/2013 to twenty in 2017/2018.

Nonetheless, heatstroke circumstances – whereas dropping from eight to 5 in the identical interval – noticed an increase from zero circumstances in 2015/2016 to 5 in 2017/2018. 

“Fortunately due to our new warmth damage preventive measures, now we have not had a heatstroke fatality for the final 4 years,” stated Dr Ng. 

These measures collectively have introduced down the prevalence of warmth exhaustion circumstances over the past decade, with greater than 50 per cent discount in some years and there was zero heatstroke circumstances since 2019, he added.