Article: EMMS Magazine 2025

Explore the new 2025 edition of the EMMS Magazine!

Dear readers,

As we navigate the third decade of the 21st century, military medicine is being shaped and tested by an evolving spectrum of conflict. Two active warzones – Ukraine, defending its sovereignty in the face of Russia’s illegal invasion, and Gaza, where Israel responds to entrenched terrorist networks – highlight the complex, overlapping medical challenges that define modern warfare. These conflicts underscore the necessity of adaptable, resilient, and ethically grounded medical responses in high-intensity, high-casualty environments.

The war in Ukraine, now in its third year, has become a brutal war of attrition marked by drone strikes, heavy artillery, and mass displacement. The scale and persistence of kinetic warfare have overwhelmed both military and civilian medical systems. Healthcare workers on the frontlines face devastating medical consequences from thermobaric weapons, including blast injuries and severe burns, and contend with polytrauma, hypothermia and delayed evacuation.

Ukraine’s rapid development of mobile surgical units, trauma stabilization points, and battlefield blood transfusion protocols has been crucial. Civilian-military collaboration, including the training of paramedics and civilian volunteers in Tactical Combat Casualty Care, has expanded the capacity to treat and stabilize patients close to the front.

In this EMMS magazine’s ‘Clinical practice in Military Medicine’ section, Mykhailo Badiuk discusses in detail the aforementioned current issues of medical care on the Ukrainian battlefield. Last year, based on this manuscript, he gave the official opening speech for the 12th DiMiMED.

In contrast, the conflict in Gaza presents the challenges of high-density urban warfare. Israel’s military operations are conducted against entrenched militant infrastructure embedded within civilian populations. This produces a different spectrum of medical dilemmas: crushing injuries from collapsed structures, burn wounds, and psychological trauma among both military personnel and civilians....