Kentucky Air Guard medical troops conduct information exchange with Ecuadorian partners

Two Airmen from the Kentucky Air National Guard ’s traveled to Ecuador in April to share information about the unit’s Critical Care Air Transport Teams with their Ecuadorian colleagues.

A CCATT provides life-sustaining medical care to injured military personnel during aeromedical evacuation flights, said Maj. April Paulsen, the group’s senior health administrator. Team members typically include a physician, a critical-care nurse and a respiratory therapist.

The Kentucky Air Guard has been paired with Ecuador since 1996 through the National Guard Bureau’s State Partnership Program, which matches the militaries of U.S. allies to National Guard units for mutual cooperation efforts.

After the Kentucky Guard helped stand up C-130 Hercules operations in Ecuador in 2024, their interest in the CCATT mission grew, said Lt. Col. Tim Ori, officer in charge.

“When they found out that we have CCATTs here in Louisville as part of our Air National Guard unit, they asked if we could come down and participate in an exchange of ideas,” Ori said. “We discussed our capabilities, the mission scope, what exactly we do, and how we manage transporting critically injured and critically ill patients.”

Paulsen said the mission is crucial.

“It’s their job to take our most critically injured personnel and get them stabilized and transported to wherever they need to go,” she said. “Medicine is different up in the air. With different elevations, medicines are pushed a different way through IVs. If you have some type of lung condition or injury, going up into a different elevation can impact that injury.”

The information exchange, conducted April 12-17, was “an unquestionable success,” Ori said.

“We were able to show them what our unit arrives with and how we set it up. It definitely left an impression with them for how they can be prepared as military medical units. They had a lot of questions about where the equipment comes from, how we were able to purchase it, who maintains it. It was a new outlook on the entire process for them.”