Soldiers of the Ohio National Guard made history by participating in a first-of-its-kind training exercise in the Bengo Province of Angola.
The exercise, dubbed PAMBALA 2017, was a combined medical exercise between Angolan, Serbian and American forces. Hosted by the Republic of Angola, the exercise marked the first time the United States has been invited to participate in an engagement with the Republic of Angola.
Three years in the making, PAMBALA came to fruition Dec. 4–15, 2017. The engagement was made possible thanks to the Ohio National Guard’s 11-year partnership with the Republic of Serbia. The Republic of Angola invited the United States to participate in the exercise through a trilateral agreement between the Angolan Armed Forces, Serbian Armed Forces and the Ohio National Guard.
“We were expanding our relationship with Serbia by incorporating medical missions,” said Officer in Charge (OIC) CPT Amanda Harder of the Ohio Army National Guard Medical Detachment. “We spent two previous years in Serbia doing Guard care, where we would go out to the field with the Serbian providers and treat Serbian [citizens]. Then, we were able to do the same thing in Angola.”
As OIC, CPT Harder had an integral role in the planning and execution of PAMBALA.
“I was the planner for the whole mission,” said CPT Harder. “It took longer to plan because there are three very different countries coming together to plan one event.”
During the many concept development meetings that led up to the event, CPT Harder and her counterparts from Serbia and Angola worked to ensure the exercise would be mutually beneficial for all parties.
“We went over what the Angolans [wanted] us to support and what exchange they wanted to have. That’s when we came up with the two-phase concept,” CPT Harder explained. “Phase one was the subject matter expert exchange. The second was the field clinic where the Ohio Army and Air National Guard, Serbian and Angolan medical providers all came together and conducted a knowledge exchange of best practices for tropical diseases in the area.”
PAMBALA included more than 400 military personnel from Ohio, Serbia and the Republic of Angola. It also included observers from Mali, Botswana, South Africa and Cote d’lvoire; and experts from the United States Agency for International Development and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Angolan infectious disease specialists also participated by providing training to U.S. and Serbian service members on endemic tropical diseases, like malaria and dengue.
