LONDON, June 19: It is taking longer time to get the injured British troops in Afghanistan to a medical facility than what used to be the case in Vietnam and non-availability of dedicated helicopters to transport the injured to field hospitals is making all the difference between life and death.
However, Britain’s most senior military medic, Surgeon General Louis Lillywhite speaking in an interview with the British Forces Broadcasting Service claims that it could take seven hours to get injured British Service personnel to a medical facility in Afghanistan, much longer than was the case for US forces in Vietnam in the 1960s and said: “First of all the seven hours I don’t recognise. The analysis that we’ve done on a total of seven months is of three hours.”
“Three hours is still considerably longer than Vietnam, but looking at the distances that the helicopters actually have to fly in theatre to actually get to the casualties and then come back again, three hours is probably as reasonable as we would expect during that particular time.”
“Yes, it still concerns me, because our own doctrine says we should get somebody to a role-two enhanced (medical facility) or a hospital facility within two hours not within three.
“To resolve this issue, we’ve developed a new procedure and we now take a consultant-led team of four that reaches the causality within two hours that we lay down in our doctrine.”
Asked about the availability of helicopters, and whether or not it would be better to have helicopters dedicated to medical evacuation, the Surgeon General said: “Let’s be quite clear about what the discussion that gave cause to this media comment is about. Everybody including myself believes that helicopters are essential to saving life in a theatre of operations. There is no dispute about that at all, and indeed as far as I’m aware commanders have always provided the medics with helicopters when they require.
“As far as the debate — whether we should have helicopters reserved only for medical evacuation and which are actually owned by the medical services — is concerned, I have never advocated that policy. I think we are better served by having access to any helicopter available at the time of emergency.”
“During practice, we find that we meet, on every occasion, the needs of the actual patients.” Meanwhile, UK’s Ministry of Defence announced on Tuesday that a special bandage, partly made from crushed shellfish, is helping to save the lives of badly injured troops and civilians in the deserts of southern Afghanistan.
The bandages are put directly into combat wounds and become sticky on contact with blood — helping clots develop and rapidly stopping even severe bleeding — a vital medical capability as rapid blood loss is one of the major causes of combat fatalities.
Carried by many troops as well as medical staff, the easy-to-use bandages — whose active ingredient ‘chitosan’ is derived from crushed prawn shells — are simply removed by surgeons when their job is done.
The bandages are one of a number of advanced pieces of medical equipment now being used to save lives at the British Field Hospital in Camp Bastion, Helmand Province — a hospital that is better equipped to deal with severe trauma casualties than many mainstream UK hospitals.
The latest enhanced equipment includes the first British CT (Computerised Tomography) scanner in Afghanistan, a range of advanced mobile digital X-ray machines and innovations such as new self-applied combat tourniquets and new rapid drug delivery systems that slash the time it takes to put in a ‘drip’. Military medics have also been supplied with another lifesaving device — a special mineral that is poured into wounds to aid clotting.
The CT scanner can also ‘stream’ digital images and data back to specialists in the UK via satellite link, and reconstruct a 3D representation of the patient’s bones and internal organs.