A Royal Air Force practice nurse holds a syringe at the Medical Centre in Gioia del Colle airbase, Italy during Operation Ellamy. The 906 Expeditionary Air Wing (906 EAW) is currently based at Gioia del Colle as part of Operation Ellamy, the UK contribution to NATO's Operation Unified Protector which enforces UN Security Council Resolution 1973, which aims to protect Libyan civilians from the Qadhafi regime.
An RAF Regiment Gunner provides force protection to Army colleagues during a casualty evacuation, Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The RAF Regiment Sqn formed a four man unit as part of the Medical Emergency Response Team. This image was a winner in the Royal Air Force Photographic Competition 2011.
The Department of Defense (DoD) announced today the launch of an interactive simulation designed to help those dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The National Center for Telehealth and Technology (T2) developed the ‘Virtual PTSD Experience’ to help combat veterans and their families and friends to anonymously enter a virtual world and learn about PTSD causes, symptoms and resources.
“We believe this is the first time DoD has used interactive simulations with the Web to help our military community with PTSD in the privacy of their homes," said Dr. George Peach Taylor Jr., principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for health affairs.
The Virtual PTSD Experience was designed to be used in the privacy of homes. Visitors are anonymous, which reduces the perceived stigma of asking for help with PTSD.
“We created an environment that lets people learn by doing, rather than reading text and watching videos on two-dimensional websites,” said. Kevin Holloway, the psychologist who led T2’s virtual world development. “They can learn something new each time they visit.”
The T2 Virtual PTSD Experience can be visited at http://www.t2health.org/vwproj/ .
The Department of Defense announced today the appointment of Navy Capt. Paul S. Hammer, as the director of the Defense Center of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE) in Arlington, Va. He will take office in January 2011.
“Capt. Hammer’s proven performance demonstrates he will advance the quality and level of care we provide members of the armed forces who have suffered from TBI or psychological illness,” said Dr. George Peach Taylor, performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs.
The DCoE was created in November 2007 to assess, validate, oversee and facilitate prevention, resilience, identification, treatment, outreach, rehabilitation, and reintegration programs for psychological health (PH) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) to ensure the Department of Defense meets the needs of the nation's military communities, warriors and families.
DCoE partners with the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs and a national network of military and civilian agencies, community leaders, advocacy groups, clinical experts and academic institutions to establish best practices and quality standards for the treatment of PH and TBI. Their work is carried out across these major areas: clinical care; education and training; prevention; research and patient, family and community outreach.
Information about the DCoE can be found at http:www.dcoe.health.mil.
The U.S. military says it has dramatically cut bomb deaths in Afghanistan with better treatment and faster evacuation of victims.
The Pentagon said 24 soldiers were killed by 180 improvised explosive devices in September, USA Today reported. The previous September, 46 servicemen died from 131 IEDs.
Ventilators distributed since 2008 to keep the wounded breathing have saved eight lives, said Army Col. Richard Todd Dombroski, surgeon for the Pentagon's Joint IED Defeat Organization. The ventilators are used aboard medevac helicopters.
Troops are also surviving at higher rates because the military has more Medevac helicopters and has moved hospitals closer to troops in combat, said U.S. Air Force Maj. Michael Johnson, a military spokesman in Kabul. Wounded troops are flown from the battlefield to a hospital about 25 percent faster than they were last year, the Pentagon said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made speedy medical evacuation in Afghanistan a top priority in 2008.
Have you ever wondered what a typical day in the life of a military medic serving in Afghanistan is like?The first sign this isn't a routine pickup is the rhythmic right and left banking of the helicopter.
It's the kind of thing kids do on bikes to feel the thrill of heeling over. Only this is done to make the aircraft a less easy target.
At 6:09 p.m., Dustoff 57 has just left this base deep in Taliban-infiltrated Kandahar province, headed for a POI, or point of injury. On board are two pilots, a crew chief and a flight medic, as well as two litters for carrying the wounded and numerous black nylon bags stuffed with ultramodern medical gear and some of the oldest lifesaving tricks of the battlefield. That combination of new and old - of specially developed porcelain-powder gauze and old-fashioned tourniquets - is key to keeping gravely wounded soldiers alive in the minutes before they get to the hospital. It's also the basis of evolving frontline strategies that may eventually trickle down in modified form to civilian ambulances, emergency rooms and trauma centers in the United States.
Somewhere ahead of the aircraft is a soldier who minutes earlier stepped on an improvised explosive device, the signature weapon of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. All the helicopter crew knows is that he's "category A" - critical.
The sun is down but there is still a little pink in the western sky. Beneath the helicopter, the ground is made of what the troops call "moon dust." Fine-grained and dry, it is a color not as dark as dirt and not as light as sand.
The aircraft weaves over compounds enclosed by mud walls and surrounded by fields of grapes and vegetables. Farther away on the sere, unirrigated plain are the domed tents of herdsmen, their cooking fires glowing like terrestrial stars.
The trip out takes nine minutes.
The helicopter lands, stirring up a cloud of moon dust that nearly obscures six soldiers kneeling and standing around the wounded man, 50 feet from the aircraft. Their headlamps make tiny blue searchlights. The 28-year-old flight medic, Sgt. Cole Reece, runs toward them.
Cpl. Deanna Helfrich, 22, the crew chief, climbs out of her window and walks around the nose of the aircraft trailing a communication cable that allows her to talk to the rest of the crew. She stands near the open door where the wounded soldier will be brought, holding her rifle.
The weapon is a reminder: The crew is here to save lives, but Rule 1 of the Basic Management Plan for Care Under Fire is: "Return fire and take cover."
The Chinese government has announced that its navy's hospital ship Peace Ark is being deployed to the Gulf of Aden.The Chinese navy hospital ship Peace Ark set sail from Zhoushan Port in eastern China's Zhejiang Province Tuesday to head to the Gulf of Aden on its first overseas medical mission.
During the 87-day mission, the ship will provide medical treatment to soldiers and officers serving in the Gulf of Aden, according to Guan Bolin, a senior official with the logistics department of the Chinese Navy.
The medical staff aboard the ship will also provide medical treatment to people in five African and Asian countries - Djibouti, Kenya, Tanzania, the Seychelles and Bangladesh.
In addition, the ship's staff plan to conduct various exchange programs with medical workers in the countries the ship calls at, said Guan, also the deputy commander of the mission.
Peace Ark is the first hospital ship in the world with a 10,000-tonne capacity. China independently developed and built it.
It has 428 soldiers, officers and medical workers aboard.
By: Shelldrake
It seems that our canine allies can develop PTSD after experiencing life-threatening trauma while on military assignment.Gina was a playful 2-year-old German shepherd when she went to Iraq as a highly trained bomb-sniffing dog with the military, conducting door-to-door searches and witnessing all sorts of noisy explosions.By: Shelldrake
She returned home to Colorado cowering and fearful. When her handlers tried to take her into a building, she would stiffen her legs and resist. Once inside, she would tuck her tail beneath her body and slink along the floor. She would hide under furniture or in a corner to avoid people.
A military veterinarian diagnosed with her post-traumatic stress disorder — a condition that experts say can afflict dogs just like it does humans.
"She showed all the symptoms and she had all the signs," said Master Sgt. Eric Haynes, the kennel master at Peterson Air Force Base. "She was terrified of everybody and it was obviously a condition that led her down that road."
A year later, Gina is on the mend. Frequent walks among friendly people and a gradual reintroduction to the noises of military life have begun to overcome her fears, Haynes said.
Haynes describes her progress as "outstanding."
"Pretty fabulous, actually," added Staff Sgt. Melinda Miller, who's been Gina's handler since May. "She makes me look pretty good."
It may sound like something out of a bad horror movie but the Baghdad Boil is a very real threat to military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.Alsaleh, a Jordanian-born military contractor who works for Falls Church-based Global Linguist Solutions, is a victim of leishmaniasis, a disease carried by sand flies that is sometimes called Baghdad Boil. He remembers that when he first got to his mattress in an old building on a contingency base, it was covered in sand flies. He brushed them away.
"It looked like a bug bite," Alsaleh said of the lesions he got on his neck and elbow while the brigade he was working with was based northwest of Mosul. "And it grew and grew and grew, and then started to ooze. Then it gets bigger and starts to ooze again."
The disease, which the World Health Organization says affects 12 million people worldwide, received considerable media and political attention in 2003 during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, when hundreds of soldiers began to spot red bumps on their skin that swelled for weeks before rupturing into seeping wounds. The number of cases dropped to a handful a month by last year, but as more U.S. troops make their way into Afghanistan, doctors and military personnel are warning that the number of cases could tick back up.
By: Shelldrake
Deployments will be a bit more stressful for smokers serving in the Navy's submarine fleet due to a recent ban on tobacco use by submariners.
This is the latest front in the long war against tobacco declared by the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Their programs to help military personnel kick the smoking habit are intended to protect the health of the current force — and to save the government hundreds of millions of dollars a year in health care costs for those who have served, and smoked, in uniform.
The Navy is cognizant that military service is stressful, especially in long and lonely deployments under the sea. Everybody is aware that smoking is a legal, if harmful, stress reliever.
So the Navy banned smoking aboard submarines not with the stated purpose of curing the smokers, but of protecting nonsmoking submarine crew members from the threat of heart and lung disease from secondhand smoke.
“Recent testing has proven that, despite our atmosphere purification technology, there are unacceptable levels of secondhand smoke in the atmosphere of a submerged submarine,” said Vice Adm. John J. Donnelly, commander of submarine forces. “The only way to eliminate risk to our nonsmoking sailors is to stop smoking aboard our submarines.”
By: Shelldrake
AT a recent news conference at the Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general, took issue with a New York Times article that referred to the Army's Warrior Transition Units (WTUs) as "warehouses of despair."
As a mother of a Fort Carson soldier who attempted to take his own life just a few months ago, I feel the term is indeed an accurate description of the WTU there. I was unaware of the depth of his despair until he made what was going to be his last call home.
"I cannot take it, Mom. I am done. I am sorry."
On Jan. 31, to my shock and horror, my son, Specialist Cole Vickery, attempted to take his life by overdosing on Trazadone, alcohol and marijuana.
After returning home from an intense combat tour in Iraq, Cole realized he needed help. He began to have nightmares, anxiety and rage for no apparent reason. Then he courageously asked for help from the Army's mental-health office. But, instead of getting help, he was ridiculed, threatened by his chain of command, drugged by the medical providers, isolated as a form of "corrective action" for sleeping in and left with no hope.
Either because of a lack of education or total disregard from his superior officers, his calls for help were dismissed.
Once out of the hospital, Cole was released to regular duty. I had to fly down to Fort Carson and speak with his company commander and physician to demand they get him into treatment.
Fort Carson's medical staff must have seen significant symptoms of stress because they put my son on a pretty heavy regimen of psychotropic medicine. Cole was given two antidepressants, pills for anxiety and insomnia, an antacid, a hypertension aid and additional insomnia medication at two times higher than the "official" recommended dose.
As a result of the sleep medication, my son had a blackout episode, resulting in an unusual forced discharge from the facility.
A religious watchdog group says a cross and a motto on the emblem of an Army hospital in Colorado violate the constitutional requirement for separation of church and state and should be removed.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation asked the Army this week to change the emblem of Evans Army Community Hospital at Fort Carson, outside Colorado Springs.
The emblem says “Pro deo et humanitate,’’ or “For God and humanity.’’
Fort Carson commanders will review the complaint, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Wollman said.
He said the emblem had been approved by the Army Institute of Heraldry and has been in use since 1969.
The DoD announced today that they are sending 116 CAV to Iraq... this Fall?!The Department of Defense announced today a replacement unit mobilized to deploy as part of the force rotation in support of Operation New Dawn. Approximately 2,700 soldiers from the 116th Cavalry Brigade Combat Team headquartered in Boise, Idaho, with elements in Montana and Oregon, will deploy in the fall of 2010.
The US Army's surgeon general on Monday expressed concern about "over-medication" of soldiers returning from combat, saying the military is closely tracking how drugs are prescribed to troops.
The top medical officer in the army, Lieutenant General Eric Schoomaker, said the increasing use of prescription drugs for soldiers recovering from combat duty in Iraq or Afghanistan reflected a wider trend in the country to treat pain primarily through medication.
But he told reporters: "I can tell you that we are concerned about over-medication."
The general said that "we're very concerned about the panoply of drugs that are being used and the numbers of drugs that are being used."
"We are monitoring it very, very closely," he said.
Prescription orders for psychiatric and pain medicines for troops have increased dramatically since 2001, according to a Military Times report in March, with one in six service members on some form of psychiatric drug.
About 15 percent of soldiers said they had abused prescription drugs in the past month, according to a Pentagon survey carried out in 2008 and released in December.
Lawmakers have urged the military to examine a possible link between a rise in suicides among troops and the use and abuse of prescription drugs.
Schoomaker said he had led a review looking at prescription drugs and his task force had promoted alternatives to pain killers, including "yoga, meditation, acupuncture, movement therapy, lots of other ways of approaching pain management."
Northrop Grumman has chosen Northern Virginia as the new home for its global headquarters, ending a heated competition among Virginia, Maryland and the District for the prestige of playing host to the defense contracting giant.
Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) announced the decision Monday night in a joint statement with Northrop, describing the selection as a victory for what he called his administration's commitment to promoting business development.
"To gain the corporate headquarters of one of the largest global security contractors in the world is a testament to the strong business climate that we are focused on continually improving," said McDonnell, who has scheduled a news conference for Tuesday afternoon at Northrop's Rosslyn offices to discuss the move.
“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.
“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”
In General McMaster’s view, PowerPoint’s worst offense is not a chart like the spaghetti graphic, which was first uncovered by NBC’s Richard Engel, but rigid lists of bullet points (in, say, a presentation on a conflict’s causes) that take no account of interconnected political, economic and ethnic forces. “If you divorce war from all of that, it becomes a targeting exercise,” General McMaster said.
Commanders say that behind all the PowerPoint jokes are serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making. Not least, it ties up junior officers — referred to as PowerPoint Rangers — in the daily preparation of slides, be it for a Joint Staff meeting in Washington or for a platoon leader’s pre-mission combat briefing in a remote pocket of Afghanistan.
Last year when a military Web site, Company Command, asked an Army platoon leader in Iraq, Lt. Sam Nuxoll, how he spent most of his time, he responded, “Making PowerPoint slides.” When pressed, he said he was serious.
“I have to make a storyboard complete with digital pictures, diagrams and text summaries on just about anything that happens,” Lieutenant Nuxoll told the Web site. “Conduct a key leader engagement? Make a storyboard. Award a microgrant? Make a storyboard.”
Despite such tales, “death by PowerPoint,” the phrase used to described the numbing sensation that accompanies a 30-slide briefing, seems here to stay. The program, which first went on sale in 1987 and was acquired by Microsoft soon afterward, is deeply embedded in a military culture that has come to rely on PowerPoint’s hierarchical ordering of a confused world.
“There’s a lot of PowerPoint backlash, but I don’t see it going away anytime soon,” said Capt. Crispin Burke, an Army operations officer at Fort Drum, N.Y., who under the name Starbuck wrote an essay about PowerPoint on the Web site Small Wars Journal that cited Lieutenant Nuxoll’s comment.
In a daytime telephone conversation, he estimated that he spent an hour each day making PowerPoint slides. In an initial e-mail message responding to the request for an interview, he wrote, “I would be free tonight, but unfortunately, I work kind of late (sadly enough, making PPT slides).”
Living in Israel and being an Israeli soldier one sees things that no human should. Yes, we go through months of extensive combat training, and yes we know exactly what to do when we come under fire. But nothing, nothing could prepare any soldier from Israel from the sheer horror and suffering that they are now witnessing in Haiti.
The IDF field hospital in Haiti, set up in extreme heat and humid weather, has enough equipment and supplies to function for about two weeks. The 121-member medical team includes 40 doctors including a psychiatrist, 20 nurses, 20 paramedics and medics, 20 lab and x-ray technicians and administrators.
Lt. Gen. P. K. Keen, the deputy director of the military's Southern Command, has been tapped to lead a new joint task force devoted to Haiti. Gen. Keen, who is already in the country, will be charged with managing the half-dozen large ships and roughly 8,000 military personnel who will soon be in or near Haiti, which was devastated by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that may have killed tens of thousands of people.
Gen. Keen will take his orders from Kenneth Merten, the American ambassador in Port-au-Prince. State Department officials said the U.S. troops that are deploying to Haiti will work closely with the 9,000-member United Nations security force there but remain solely under American command.
Nine firefighters from Canadian Forces Base Trenton arrived Thursday in Port-au-Prince and were told to prepare to begin the searches. Military medical personnel, who had so far focused on the Canadian embassy in the battered capital of Haiti caring for injured Canadians and transporting them to the airport for flights back home, were also getting ready to venture out into the city to sift through the shattered buildings.
The preparations come as Canadian officials try to grapple with the exact number of missing or unaccounted Canadians. Foreign Affairs estimated that there were about 6,000 Canadians living in Haiti at the time of the earthquake.
Capability One, Airfield
"We are scheduled to be among the first people on the ground over there and we don't know the extent of damage done to the airfield," said Major Daniels. "Our goal is to have the airfield ready to take on full traffic by tonight. We bring our own lights and communication equipment so we are prepared."
In addition to opening up the International Airport at Port-au-Prince, combat controllers are trained to survey other areas to look for potential airdrop and landing zones so other cargo and personnel can be accepted into the country if required.
Capability Two, Medical
"Our members are trained paramedics and trained in trauma related to disasters like this," said Major Daniels. "Since our airfield will be open, we will be able to treat and medevac victims if needed.
"Just like if we were deployed in combat, we are ready to conduct search and rescue missions to include rescuing members in everything from a collapsed building to an elevator shaft."
Capability Three, Weather
"Weather will play a huge role in air operations. Our Airmen will take on-scene observations so incoming aircraft will know what to expect and can plan accordingly," said Major Daniels.
The major reinforced that all of the team members who are deploying are dedicated and ready to carry out the mission.
"Every Airman we sent has either recently returned from a deployment, is getting ready for a deployment or both," said Major Daniels. "Our Airmen are motivated to help the people of Haiti."
The day after arriving at Fort Hood, Army reservists dedicated to counseling troubled soldiers in war zones were overcome with their own grief.
Nearly a fourth of the Wisconsin-based 467th Medical Detachment's soldiers died or were injured in the shooting rampage last month at the sprawling Texas post. The accused gunman, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, was supposed to deploy with the unit.
Yet the soldiers said they never wavered in their determination to serve. They spent the last month training together, and several soldiers from across the country volunteered to fill the void left by the three soldiers slain and six others seriously wounded.
The 43 members of the Army Reserve combat stress unit were set to deploy to Afghanistan on Friday. Department of Defense officials decided only recently that the unit would deploy as originally scheduled.
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