Medical Cover Sandy Side

[Report Line]

The MOD is refuting claims made in a Sunday broadsheet that we are short of doctors in Afghanistan. If there is one factor that must be in place (for me at least) during a deployment it is that the best medical care available is present at the deployed location. Lets hope this is the Journos getting it wrong - comments?

http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/EquipmentAndLogistics/MedicalFacilitiesInAfghanistan.htm

[airborne_artist]

The Sunday Telegraph article (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/16/ntroops116.xml)

"After spending three weeks on the front line in Helmand with the Royal Anglian Regiment, however, it can be revealed:
• one military base under daily Taliban attack spent three weeks without a doctor
• the main military hospital in Helmand has run out of beds twice in six month
• no formal system exists in the Army to replace soldiers killed and injured in battle
• helicopter shortages have meant that one isolated base was down to its last 50 rounds of mortar ammunition
• the commanding officer of one unit was stranded at a base for five days by the lack of helicopters
• heavy machine guns in use by the Army are 55 years old


The shortage of doctors in Helmand was revealed following the death last month of Captain David Hicks, second-in-command of C (Essex) Company 1 Royal Anglians. He had repeatedly requested that a doctor capable of conducting emergency minor surgery be sent to Patrol Base Inkerman in the Sangin valley."

[Pontius Navigator]

I know one light bn will be light one medic after his tour in Iraq is over.

Other times on exercises or in Kosovo where the bn has done 50-50 deployment the medics have been deployed for all of the time.

He has done his time and he knows where the NHS want him.