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CAFTT Airmen improve public health program, DFAC for Iraqi Air Force

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Jessica Lockoski
  • 506th Air Expeditionary Group Public Affairs
With the opening of a new Iraqi dining facility, featuring menu selections like kebabs, samoon-a flat bread-and baklava, the ability to prepare food safely is paramount.

The Iraqi air force opened a new DFAC, with its greatly expanded food service capability, and served its first meal May 5, thanks in great part to the Coalition Air Force Training Team advisors assigned to the 521st Air Expeditionary Advisory Squadron here.

Food not properly prepared can cause life-threatening illnesses and infections. To fight that threat, airmen here are providing a stronger public health system for Iraqi Airmen by training them to perform food service facility inspections.

Master Sgt. Amy Swanger, an independent duty medical technician for the Coalition Air Force Training Team, recognized there wasn't a program in place for Iraqis to conduct food service inspections.

Because of the Iraqi airmen's inexperience in public health standards, the State College, Pa., native deployed from Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, knew the public health standards needed to be enforced.

"Because these guys don't have any training on food service facility inspections, they were missing a lot of things," she said, referring to food preparation regulations. "They knew little about what they were looking at; they didn't know what kinds of questions to ask."

Sergeant Swanger said she took essential items from the U.S. Food Code, which is what Air Force Public Health offices use when inspecting U.S. and AAFES food service facilities, removed culturally sensitive material, and created a training program for the airmen.

At the old Iraqi Air Force dining facility, she showed Iraqi medical technicians how to recognize problems that occurred in food management.

"I would have them show me what's wrong there; what's wrong with the bags of rice being stored and what to look for while inspecting canned goods," she said. "We went step-by-step using the new critical food list."

Sergeant Swanger partnered with a 506th Expeditionary Medical Squadron public health official to allow the Iraqi medical technicians into the kitchens of AAFES food facilities for on-the-job training.

"This training gives them a visual point of reference for what a facility is supposed to look like," she said.

Sergeant Swanger reviewed some of the essential procedures in the training environment: safe temperatures for hot and cold food; parts per million for a bleach sanitizing solution; and how food and kitchen equipment should be cleaned and stored.

She said she thinks her training program is a small piece of a much larger picture in public health, but it is essential for the well-being of the Iraqi air force. Without the program, a lapse in proper food preparation could yield deadly results.

Sergeant Swanger said people can contract a wide variety food borne illnesses such as hepatitis, typhoid and cholera from food if they aren't careful. "Any kind of fecal, oral and transmittable diseases like salmonella can occur when people aren't properly trained."

Sergeant Swanger said these types of food-borne illnesses have a direct impact on troop strength.

"If you are in a military organization, everyone eats from one food service facility and there's an outbreak of typhoid, you can easily have a lot of people down," she said. "They are no longer able to complete their mission."

She told the Iraqi airmen that three things have saved more human lives and prevented more suffering than antibiotics and surgeries: clean water, clean food and immunizations.

This food program helps with that cause, she said. "In the history of human warfare, more people have died from diseases than combat injuries."