Posted on 03/30/2003 3:34:45 AM PST by sarcasm
ABOARD THE USNS COMFORT (AP) -- Navy nurse Kimberlee Flannery came to the Persian Gulf expecting to help wounded Americans. Instead, she has been caring mostly for injured enemy soldiers.
Flannery admits she was "very apprehensive" when her first Iraqi soldier came aboard this U.S. Navy hospital ship. But any misgivings she might have had quickly melted away.
"Then you see the pain and the agony of the people, and that whole mindset is erased," said the 23-year-old from Chillicote, Ohio.
So far, the patient roster aboard the USNS Comfort off the coast of Bahrain, has been the product of a lopsided casualty count in the war on Iraq.
Navy officials won't give out numbers, but doctors and nurses said the vast majority of patients are Iraqis, including soldiers.
Sr. Chief Petty Officer Bill Phillips, who works in the Comfort's "Casualty" ward emergency room, said the crew acts professionally, no matter whether the patient is friend or foe.
"Pretty much all these people have dedicated their lives to medicine -- for them, it's the patient first," Phillips said. "We're lifesavers here. A lot of these (Iraqis) didn't have the choice to fight against us, so we can't hold that against them."
Iraqi women and children are among the Comfort's patients, but most of the wounded there are young men in their late teens and 20s, an emergency room doctor said on condition of anonymity. But catching a glimpse of the Iraqi wounded is difficult.
Journalists are not permitted to see them, in part because interviewing prisoners of war is a violation of the Geneva Convention, said Lt. Byron Adams, the ship's lawyer.
On Friday, reporters were rushed out of the emergency room moments before some injured Iraqis arrived.
Painted white, with three red crosses on each side, the Comfort -- one of the United States' two hospital ships -- is the most sophisticated medical facility in the region. It includes 1,000 beds, 12 operating rooms, an intensive care unit and decontamination facilities in case of a chemical or nuclear attack.
Among the ship's 62 doctors -- mostly Navy physicians from the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland -- are two neurosurgeons, a plastic surgeon and a pediatrician. Heart surgery and organ transplants are the only procedures that can't be performed on board.
But there initially were other constraints with Iraqi patients.
Officials had wanted only male nurses to tend to the prisoners in deference to cultural and security concerns.
But Flannery said the crew's demographics made that impractical.
"In a nursing environment you don't have too many men," Flannery said. "The men were being worked to death" and now both men and women treat the Iraqis.
Terp
They're everywhere.
We treat their wounded soilders with compassion and humility while they butcher ours. It's the right thing but it makes me nuts.
Sometimes it sucks being human.
An interesting quote. In another context, this is why there are women in harm's way, on the ground in Iraq: not enough men in the service to keep them in the traditionally less hazardous support areas. God bless them all, no matter what their sex, MOS or rating.
I hope the triage procedures place ANY coalition injury above ALL enemy injuries on the priority list.
The military hierarchy decides what the hospital ship is for, not you. It is a military asset of the Navy and all its personnel are active duty military members carrying out the mission prescribed under orders by the Chief of Naval Operations and the theater commanders. These physicians and nurses are not civilians with humanitarian leanings. Your opinion concerning the use of military assets is irrelevant.
Having a wife who was stationed onboard the Comfort for 3 yrs, I can factually say the ship is for treatment of ALL wounded combatants. By Geniva conventions we have to give treatment to POWs equal to pur own. the Ship makes tours around the world, giving treatment to people in 3rd world areas. A perfect example of that was during the "Baltic Challenge" exercise of 97, when they opened the wards and gave treatment to the people of Lithuania, preforming life saving heart surgery on a 7 yr old girl.
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