Northland soldier trades kitchen for challenges of tropics

Corporal Prentice is a Force Health Protection Technician within the Royal New Zealand Army Medical Corps, and has been taking part in Exercise Tropic Twilight on Ma’uke in the Cook Islands.

Funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, this year’s exercise involves more than 30 personnel from the NZ Army’s 25 Engineer Support Squadron, 2 Engineer Regiment supported by a medical team and international participants from Australia, Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu.

The team is carrying out maintenance and improvements on the island’s solar farm, water infrastructure, school and halls.

Those 30 personnel aren’t just thrown into the tropics and told to get on with it. Corporal Prentice is there to protect the health of the soldiers by mitigating potential health hazards in the environment.

This involves ensuring water safety through testing and treatment, pest control including fogging and spraying for insect vectors - particularly mosquitoes which can transmit dangerous diseases, and monitoring environmental factors such as heat to assist in preventing heat-related illness. 

Corporal Prentice said missions often meant taking their own food and water. 

“So there’s low risk on that front, but anything can happen and we need to try mitigate risk and react quickly.”

Situations can slowly develop, so it’s his role to determine the source if there is an incident or if someone does fall ill.

Corporal Prentice has previously deployed to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, which he said were “pretty hot” for environmental risks. 

“The usual operation would be a Pinzgauer vehicle with a mini lab plugged into the power of the vehicle.” 

For Ma’uke, Corporal Prentice doesn’t have a Pinzgauer, but enough testing equipment for basic water analysis, pest control, a fogger for fumigating, a sprayer for residual spraying of surfaces, PPE and chemicals, and a range of testing kits and equipment. 

Corporal Prentice enlisted in 2015 and spent five years as a caterer. The food safety aspect was a natural lead into the Force Health Protection role. 

The trade involves training in Australia and the United States. Corporal Prentice is also studying for a graduate diploma in environmental health from Massey University, which will give him the option to become a specialist officer later in his career.

“It’s a really interesting field. I like problem solving and there are a lot of problem solving in this job.”