Illness Pulls More Troops From Battle Than Wounds

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Forum Spin Doctor
Miami Herald
October 30, 2007 Of more than 36,000 U.S. troops evacuated from Iraq, over 77 percent were for illnesses or noncombat injuries.
By Jay Price, McClatchy News Services
CAMP VICTORY, Iraq -- High blood pressure, bad backs, bum knees and other mundane health problems put 3 ½ times more troops on planes to hospitals in Germany or the United States than do snipers and roadside bombs, front-line experts in Iraq say.
''There's nothing about being deployed or being in an austere environment that protects you from the normal maladies that people encounter in the United States,'' said Lt. Col. Ron Ross, a preventive medicine officer with the U.S. Army's 62nd Medical Brigade in Iraq.
From the invasion in March 2003 through Oct. 1, 2007, more than 36,000 U.S. troops were evacuated from Iraq. More than 77 percent of those were for illnesses or noncombat injuries, according to data from the Department of Defense, Deployment Health Support Directorate.
Most eventually return, said Ross, but the illnesses and accidents still cut into troop strength.
This is nothing new. Traditionally, such problems -- which the military lumps together as Disease and Non-Battlefield Injuries -- take more troops from the battlefield than combat injuries do, though modern medical care and public health techniques have cut the rate suffered by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to 10 percent of what it was in World War II and Korea.
An example of that success is the U.S. fight against leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease spread by sandflies that causes festering wounds and can attack the organs.
When the British army came to Iraq in the 1930s, leishmaniasis incapacitated up to 30 percent of the troops, said Lt. Col. Ray Dunton, a trained entomologist who is in Iraq serving as chief of preventive medicine for the 62nd Medical Brigade.
In 2004, hundreds of U.S. soldiers also were infected. Preventive medicine teams went into action, spraying insecticide and urging troops to use insect repellent. Infestations dropped from an average of 140 a month to nearly zero. Only 10 people have been diagnosed with leishmaniasis this year.
Still, the proportion of troops hospitalized for illness and noncombat injuries compared with combat injuries hasn't changed much since the wars in Korea and Vietnam. In part, that's because of a more aggressive philosophy about treatment, Ross said.
 
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