Berlin’s Senate and city hospitals are proactively preparing for potential defense scenarios, with a corresponding framework plan set to be unveiled shortly, according to reports in the “Tagesspiegel”.
The plan involves training a dedicated incident management team within each hospital, ensuring immediate availability in an emergency. To facilitate adherence to instructions from the federal and state governments, a central crisis management team encompassing multiple hospitals is also being established.
Regular training sessions are planned to heighten awareness among hospital staff and prepare them for potential contingencies. The experience of treating patients arriving from Ukraine has familiarized local physicians and nurses with injuries commonly associated with conflict zones – encompassing wounds caused by explosions, heavy artillery and bomb fragments. Institutions like the Charité, the trauma center and the Bundeswehr hospital have become particularly experienced in such cases.
The city’s health administration will soon identify retired or otherwise currently occupied healthcare professionals – nurses, doctors and paramedics – to potentially mobilize them in times of need. Hospitals are expected to stockpile fuel reserves for their vehicles sufficient for 72 hours and implement similar preparations for backup power generation, using generators and aggregate systems to ensure continuity of operations in the event of attacks on the electricity grid.
Health Senator Ina Czyborra (SPD) and Marc Schreiner, Managing Director of the Berlin Hospital Association, are scheduled to present the framework plan on Thursday. The initiative stems from a working group, “Civil Defense Hospitals” which has been meeting within the health administration since 2023. This group specifically conducted a simulation based on a NATO alliance defense scenario, a scenario considered plausible by the Chancellery and the German Armed Forces.
