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During my time as a medic in Iraq I treated soldiers, airmen, naval personnel, coalition forces, U.S. civilians, civilians from other countries hired by the U.S. and Iraqis. I saw many local children over there- when I stood in the tower watching the nearby farming village, I saw them play soccer in the road, and bathe in the man-made waterhole outside the fence.
When I worked as an escort for the Iraqi patients, picking them up at the gate, bringing them to the hospital, I saw the children then too. And on Emergency Response ambulance service- they were there.
Of all the casualties I saw over there, whether directly treating, or just passing while dealing with other patients- nothing was harder than seeing sick, injured, and in all too many cases- dying children.
So when I came across this article in the Sun-Times, I couldn’t look away.
It’s too easy to lose focus on what’s going on, when trying to just focus on the big picture.
More than 1,000 children were admitted to U.S. military hospitals during the three-year study period. (referring to a study done from Dec ‘01- Dec ‘04)
The study found that almost 6 percent of the pediatric patients in military hospitals died.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 U.S. military to help their children with more conventional ailments.
We’re doing good things treating all of these kids, doing everything we can to save everyone we can- sometimes it’s not enough, but that’s the nature of medicine. But as the article says, with no frontlines in this never-ending war, children are more vulnerable to injury from war related activity, and since we first invaded Iraq, the medical system there, like so many other public systems, collapsed.
Sometimes it feel like chicken and egg… there are no easy answers in any of this. And right now, at this exact moment, I’m not asking for one. This moment, I’ll let that pass so that instead of pondering who to blame, and who to attack, and all of the wheel spinning and nonsense… instead of all that, take a moment to think about all the lives- ours, theirs, all of them- that have been affected by this war. And once you’ve taken that moment, then maybe some of the answers will come.
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