Doctors concerned with injuries incurred by U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians spoke in Kerckhoff Hall Saturday about their experiences and statistics they say need more attention from U.S. leaders.
The conference, titled “The Medical Consequences of the War in Iraq: Health Challenges Beyond the Battlefield,” focused on what doctors say is the underfunded and declining health care of Iraqis and American soldiers in Iraq.
Many of the doctors who spoke had first-hand experience with injured and psychologically affected U.S. soldiers.
The conference was organized by Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles, whose goal is to increase preventative health care around the world, said Executive Director Jonathan Parfrey.
One topic of discussion was the number of civilian casualties in Iraq.
Estimates on the number of civilians killed since the 2003 invasion vary. A recent study by Johns Hopkins University, which presents the highest estimate of civilian casualties so far, places the number at 655,000 Iraqi civilian deaths since 2003.
As violence in Iraq escalates, the country’s need for medical treatment has increased as well, said Iraqi speaker Dr. Dahlia Wasfi. Because many medical professionals fled the country, Wasfi continued, treatment and supplies are scarce.
In the case of U.S. soldiers, more than 30,000 soldiers’ injuries may have to be treated for years to come, according to a presentation by Dr. Gene Bolles.
The multiple physical and psychological injuries incurred simultaneously by war victims have recently introduced a new word into the medical lexicon: polytrauma.
Parfrey said treating the injured soldiers in Iraq is costly.
Throughout a soldier’s lifetime, the cost of polytrauma care can range from $600,000 to $5 million, according to a January 2006 study by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz.
Bolles, who served as chief of neurosurgery at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, said he witnessed many cases of polytrauma when he treated war victims from both Afghanistan and Iraq from 2003 to 2005.
While many injuries were the result of violence, some were the result of a soldier’s daily routine, such as carrying heavy materials over long distances, Bolles said.
“On average, I performed six to seven spinal cord surgeries a week,” Bolles said. “The human spine simply was not designed to carry the amount of weight these soldiers carry every day, especially under all that armor.”
In addition to physically injured soldiers, doctors also emphasized the number of veterans that will need treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, a psychological condition many soldiers experience after war.
In a piece of a documentary Bolles played, one soldier said, “The hardest thing to deal with after war is that I don’t fit anywhere. I only fit with myself – and I hate myself.”
The original 2006 national budget allowed funding for 2,900 cases of PTSD – but 20,000 soldiers requested the psychological treatment, making the budget over a billion dollars shy.
When Republican and Democratic lawmakers realized the shortfall, they came together unanimously on a bill, adding $1.5 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
In addition to the doctors who spoke, Congressman Bob Filner, D-San Diego, talked about his plans to make medical treatment funds for veterans assured, instead of the current discretionary process.