February 05, 2008	Tuesday	Muharram 26, 1429

CHICAGO: US military hospitals treated a significant number of wounded and sick children in the early years of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, a new study finds, and military doctors say children keep arriving at their hospitals today.

With no true front line or battle zone, the war makes children especially vulnerable to stray bullets and other combat hazards, one study author said. And with Iraq’s own medical system collapsing, families seek out the US military to help their children with more conventional ailments.

“I took care of children burned from a kerosene heater, regular car accidents, and other injuries secondary to the conflict itself,” said study co-author Dr Philip Spinella, who served as an Army doctor in Baghdad in 2004 and 2005.

Military doctors routinely treat children wounded by rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs, said Spinella, who now works at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford.

The study, published in the February issue of the journal Pediatrics, is based on Army hospital data from December 2001 to December 2004.

The situation has not changed, though. On Friday, two young Iraqi burn victims and a young Iraqi boy who underwent three surgeries for abdominal injuries and a leg amputation were being treated at the busy Air Force Theater Hospital at the US air base in Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad.

“The majority of our patients at any given time are Iraqi nationals,” Air Force Major David Norton, who runs the intensive care unit there, said in an e-mail. “With respect to children in particular, we see far too many. Iraqi children, through no fault of their own, are forced to grow up quickly and are oftentimes the unfortunate victims of an adult world.”

Army 1st Lt Lee Jackson, a paediatric nurse at the Balad hospital, said in an e-mail that the ICU sometimes seems like a paediatric unit because of the number of children there.

“We take great joy in the recovery of our paediatric patients and we grieve for each one that has a poor outcome,” Jackson said.

The study found that almost 6 per cent of the paediatric patients in military hospitals died, a death rate similar to that of adult non-US coalition patients.

The researchers, all current or former military doctors, wanted to quantify what they had seen with their own eyes. Analysing hospital data, they discovered children made up 4 per cent of admissions and 10 per cent of bed-days in US military hospitals in the early years of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

More than 1,000 children were admitted to US military hospitals during the three-year study period.

Caring for children generates enormous good will among the people of Iraq, Dr Eaman Algobory, an Iraqi medical officer in Baghdad for the International Office for Migration, said.

“It’s like an angel touched their heart,” Algobory said of the effect on Iraqis who have experienced the Army’s medical care of children. “American soldiers in the field, if they see any child hurt, automatically they will try to protect them and evacuate them and try to save his life. This is well known in the street.”

She was not involved in the new study, but has worked with Spinella and other military doctors to find care for children.

Few deployed doctors and nurses are paediatric specialists, but the US Army Medical Command has adapted to what the study authors called “the increased load of paediatric patients.”

The Army now offers paediatric trauma training to hospital staff before deployment and has added child-size equipment and liquid antibiotics to its supplies. Paediatric specialists are available by telephone.

The researchers couldn’t determine how many of the treated children had combat-related injuries, said study co-author Dr Mark Burnett of Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, who served in Iraq in 2006 and 2007.—AP