Norwegian Defense Attache Lieutenant Colonel Egil Daltveit sent out an open letter to deny claims that Macedonia sent an unprepared surgical team to Afghanistan.

The team operates within a Norwegian field hospital in Kabul and, as a number of news outlets reported in February, was apparently unprepared for the task. Netpress cited a report apparently prepared by the Macedonian army, informing that particularly the vascular surgeon attached to the team was completely unprepared for the mission. This was repeated by VMRO-DPMNE member of Parliament Bojan Stojanoski, which prompted the letter from Daltveit.

The accusations against the members of the Macedonian surgical team are not correct. If the accusations were correct, your team would not be on duty in Kabul now responsible for saving the lives of allied and Norwegian soldiers when needed. Defence Minister Radmila Sekerinska and General Vasko Gjurchinovski together asked me officially if the Kingdom of Norway would be willing to train a Macedonian surgical team and integrate it in the Norwegian-led field hospital in Kabul as part of Operation Resolute Support, the NATO Mission Afghanistan. Norway accepted this, and the team came to Norway to train on 15 January and deployed to Afghanistan in March. It is natural that a team that has been recruited in order to establish the foundation of the capability of field surgical teams in the Armed Forces of North Macedonia was not 100 percent ready at the start of the training. Neither was the Norwegian team. The training was conducted by the Norwegian Joint Military Medical Service, and the methodology and quality of training is such that many of the larger NATO countries, like the USA, have sent and are sending their teams to Norway to take part in this type of training. In short, they are being trained by some of the leading experts on trauma surgery in the world, the officer said.

Daltveit adds that he spoke with Stojanoski and VMRO-DPMNE officials to ask for a retraction, and received an email from Stojanoski, but is not satisfied with it. He insists that the Macedonian team holds a rotation, along with two other teams, and every three days is the primary response team in the hospital, already performing a number of surgeries.