AMedP-8.7 first aid kits and emergency medical care kits

What it is

What AMedP-8.7 covers

AMedP-8.7 is the NATO Allied Medical Publication that fixes the minimum contents of the first aid and emergency medical kits NATO forces carry. It covers four kit types: an Individual First Aid Kit "is recommended to be carried by all military personnel"; a Vehicle First Aid Kit carried in military vehicles; special purpose kits that nations develop for environments such as jungle, snake-bite risk, survival, Special Operations Forces, or air and naval operations; and, in Annex A, Emergency Medical Care Kits carried by "trained and credentialed medical personnel above the level of combat life saver," described in the document as medics, nurses and doctors, working forward of any medical treatment facility. The document states plainly that "the following kits and their items are the minimum required for essential first aid of NATO Forces and will be provided at appropriate levels," and that nations may supplement the number of kits and items at their own discretion.

How it comes to bind

Nations record their agreement to use AMedP-8.7 in STANAG 2126: "the agreement of nations to use this publication is recorded in STANAG 2126." AMedP-8.7 is the technical content; the STANAG is what commits a nation to it, and a nation can ratify with a reservation, as several have here. The current edition, Edition A, Version 1, was approved by the nations in the Military Committee Medical Standardization Board and became effective on receipt in March 2018. For an organisation, the practical route in is not the STANAG itself: it is whatever a nation's own procurement or kit-assembly requirement specifies, since AMedP-8.7 addresses nations rather than suppliers directly.

What the chapters set out

Chapter 1 covers the Individual First Aid Kit and the Vehicle First Aid Kit. Both are to be "assembled and issued at national discretion," with all military personnel expected to be "adequately trained in the proper wear and maintenance of the kit, and be properly trained in the application and use of all components," and potency dated materiel is to stay "held under medical supervision until issue is required." The Vehicle First Aid Kit carries "the same equipment as the individual kit, in a sufficient amount in accordance with national regulations." A separate clause recommends that nations develop special purpose kits, such as jungle, snake-bite, survival, Special Operations Forces, or air and naval kits, "in accordance with national requirements."

Annex A covers Emergency Medical Care Kits, carried by trained and credentialed medical personnel working above combat life saver level. Their contents depend on "the competency of the personnel, operational environment and transport platforms," and the annex expects the kit to follow recognised battlefield trauma-care principles, which it names as TCCC. Nations are told to "review these medical kits in light of their own requirements and tailor them to the specific operations." This page does not reproduce the item-level contents of any kit: that is exactly the testable detail the document itself leaves to a nation's own kit specification.

Where nations differ

The promulgation record lists formal reservations from Canada, Czechia, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Norway and the Slovak Republic, each stating where its own kit provision departs from the common baseline. That is the document's own mechanism for a nation to record a difference, not a sign of non-compliance. The UK's reservation separately states that "British Standard BS8599-2 will continue to be the baseline standard for GBR Vehicle First Aid Kits (V-FAKs)," a civil, UK national standard the document does not otherwise reference, kept alongside AMedP-8.7 rather than replaced by it.