A New U.S. Hospital In Iraq, Built To Last

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Philadelphia Inquirer
July 3, 2007 A hint of the long haul will replace M.A.S.H.-like tents.
By Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press
BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq - At half past midnight, the helicopters dropped off the wounded - fleeting silhouettes wheeled away on gurneys in the glow of blue landing lights, four soldiers among the last of thousands to pass through the M.A.S.H. of the Iraq war.
The makeshift sprawl of tents that received them, the Air Force Theater Hospital, Iraq's premier trauma center and a war-zone fixture, will soon give way to a modern, "hard-sided" complex across the road.
The opening of that 107,000-square-foot hospital, in stages throughout this month, not only brings a more standard, state-of-the-art facility to Iraq, but it also announces that the U.S. military, after more than 3,500 dead and 25,000 wounded in four years of war, will be well-prepared to deal with severe casualties for years to come.
At a time when no target date has been set for a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq, the new Balad hospital looks ready for an extended U.S. stay. "It'll be good for 10 years, depending on how well you take care of it," said Col. Brian Masterson, the hospital commander.
The staff in the "soft-sided" maze of tent flaps and wooden floors, covering 62,000 square feet at this base 50 miles north of Baghdad, say the care already ranks with the best. "Don't let our surroundings fool you," said Tech. Sgt. Ellwood Tegtmeier, 35, of Pittsburgh. "We are state-of-the-art. Except we do it in the heat, in tents, in sandstorms."
Balad's 50 or so dun-colored tent sections house a "16-slice" CAT scanner and broad expertise, from thoracic and vascular surgeons to the U.S. military's only neurosurgeons in Iraq.
The No. 1 mission of the hospital's 379-member staff is to perform emergency surgery and other procedures for troops badly wounded by blasts, shrapnel, bullets and burns. They also must prepare the wounded for evacuation on nightly flights to the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.
Balad's casualties are not just American. Among the tents that serve as hospital wards, the Iraqi patient population at times has rivaled the American. On one recent night, seven children lay in a 10-bed Iraqi ward, victims of explosions and other violence whose origins - cross fire, terrorism, U.S. air strikes - usually remain murky.
"In the emergency room, we don't actually know if it's an American or an Iraqi, whether it's a POW," said Air Force Capt. Matthew Sena, 37, a surgeon. "It wouldn't make any difference."
Masterson and his staff are proud of the 98 percent survival rate for the wounded that come through their emergency-room tent. "This hospital rivals any trauma center back home," the colonel said.
But the staff is looking forward to the move into the spacious new facility, which will offer 18 emergency-room beds.
The new hospital - four steel-walled, connected buildings erected at a cost of $9.7 million - should end problems with electrical power too erratic for some sophisticated equipment, with feeble air-conditioning that allowed temperatures to top 100 degrees inside the tents, and with water supplies sometimes insufficient.
The U.S. command vetoed a proposal for a $43 million "brick-and-mortar" hospital, Masterson said, to avoid giving the U.S. military presence too permanent a look.
 
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