Dying, losing limbs & eyes, traumatised, airlifted for emergency treatment:
How British troops are “winning” in Afghanistan
We barely get to hear of the British soldiers killed, now running at a higher rate that at any time since the invasion in 2001. Two more killed on 22/23 May brought the total to 161.
 We hear even less of the 20 British service men and women who on average every week receive emergency treatment at Camp Bastion, the British army’s emergency field hospital. There are 8300 British troops in Afghanistan. This means, at the current rate of around 1000 serious casualties a year, every soldier has a one in eight chance of being seriously injured or contracting a serious illness.
Between October and December 2008, over 200 troops were airlifted out of the country. Medical facilities in both the UK and Afghanistan are under considerable strain and a senior medical officer describes the injuries as "bad as you can imagine".
In one recent incident, a Royal Marine lost an arm, a leg and an eye in an explosion while he was trying to rescue another marine who had sustained serious leg injuries after stepping on an IED.
Surgeon Commander Richard Bateman, 37, from Long Ashton, Bristol, one of the doctors based at Camp Bastion, the main British base in Helmand, said the pressure on medical staff was pushing staff to their limits.
He said: "We're almost exclusively seeing trauma cases. They are as bad as you can imagine. I would be lying if I said it didn't affect me.
"It takes a bit of getting used to. It's more the fact that it's fairly frequent. I wouldn't say relentless but it feels like it sometimes. One day we had six trauma calls and something like 20 patients through the door."
The numbers of wounded servicemen returning from Helmand has placed pressures on Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham, the main National Health Service hospital, in the UK which treats injured troops. There are currently 27 wounded soldiers being treated in the hospital but the MoD insists the staff can cope. Selly's Oak's "military managed" ward can accommodate 36 casualties and any increase in number would result in troops being treated on civilian wards.
One soldier who had recently visited an injured colleague at Selly Oak, described it as being "packed" with wounded troops. He added: "Visiting Selly Oak is humbling and traumatic. It's like a first world war field hospital. Everywhere you look there are troops with appalling injuries, with legs and arms missing. Some are blind and its clear some will never fully recover."
Improvements in combat body armour and medical treatment mean that troops injured in IED attacks have a much better chance of surviving albeit with horrific life-changing injuries.
Patrick Mercer, a former infantry commander and the Tory MP for Newark, said: "Sadly the only casualties the public tends to hear about are the fatalities but there are also the men and women who have had their lives ruined by multiple wounds.
Edited version of article in the Daily Telegraph
See also:
Why you should sign the Afghanistan troops out petition...
Afghanistan: This is what "liberation" looks like...
From Iraq to Afghanistan: repeating the same mistakes
Why do Afghans have a life expectancy of only 44 years?... |
