Aviation Sanitary Service

AVIATION SANITARY SERVICE, has as its purpose the comprehensive medical and sanitary support of units of the military air fleet. The tasks of this service as a whole can be divided into two groups: a) those analogous to military-sanitary activities in other branches of the armed forces, and b) special tasks related to the specific features of flight activity (see Aviation hygiene). The latter tasks consist mainly of: a) conducting special selection of candidates capable by their psycho-physiological qualities for flight-lifting activity; b) systematic medical observation and study of changes in these qualities both during the period of school training and subsequent service, for the purpose of implementing preventive and other medical-sanitary measures; c) determining and studying the sanitary-hygienic conditions of labor and daily life of flight-lifting personnel and participating in the improvement of labor and living conditions in the interests of the flight service itself and in the protection of the health of flight personnel; d) organizing emergency medical-surgical aid at airfields in case of accidents throughout the entire flight period; e) communicating to flight personnel knowledge in the field of hygiene and psychophysiology, ensuring a conscious attitude toward the preservation of their health and the associated increase in labor productivity. For the most complete implementation of scientific research activity in the air fleet of all large armies of the New and Old World, special scientific research institutions (laboratories, institutes) have been established. In Italy, the United States of America, France, and England, such institutions were founded as early as the World War. In the USSR, the first laboratories were founded in 1924; prior to this, in 1921, a special commission for the study of the hygiene of flight-lifting activity was formed under the Military-Sanitary Administration of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. In recent years, the network of psycho-physiological laboratories has expanded. The Aviation Sanitary Service everywhere is part of the general army military-sanitary service, except in England, where, in view of the existence of an independent Ministry of Aviation, it exists quite independently, on equal terms with the military-sanitary service of the army and navy. In the USSR, the Aviation Sanitary Service of the army is concentrated in the Military-Sanitary Administration of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. The special requirements placed on the Aviation Sanitary Service have caused in all countries the necessity of creating special cadres of aviation physicians; in the USSR, special courses have been organized for this purpose.