[3][4] Organized by the Humanitarian Action Office of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), START was certified as a specialized team by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 31 May 2018 as part of its Emergency Medical Team (EMT) initiative.
[2][3][5] START is classified as an EMT II team, able to provide primary care as well as surgical support and hospitalization.
[5] START was first deployed in 2019 to Dondo, Mozambique, in response to the humanitarian emergency caused by Cyclone Idai.
[1][4][6] In Mozambique, the team deployed a field hospital about the size of a football pitch.
[4] The team was also part of the Spanish humanitarian response to the unplanned explosions at a munitions site in Bata, Equatorial Guinea in early 2021.