Medical Evacuations

I was asking before about sources of data on medical evacuations out of Iraq. I've turned up one source that appears to account for the bulk of the 18,000 evacs reported by UPI earlier this year on the Army's Medical Evacuation Statistics page. I say "the bulk" because the page indicates that "all numbers represent only Army soldiers evacuated to Army medical treatment facilities." The Airforce and Navy medical sites do not appear to provide the same information, and I've submitted queries to each about where I might find it.

Anyway, the Army's stats are updated monthly. The latest (start of the war through 7/31/2004):

Total number of evacuations to Army facilities: 13,263

• Wounded in action (WIA): 1,500*


• Non-battle injuries (NBI): 4,416


• Disease: 7,347

*Note that our number for WIA may seem low. We believe this is because those who are evacuated from theater represent only a portion of those who are wounded in action—in other words, most WIAs are treated in theater.

The headline number for wounded troops as reported by the media is around 6500. That number obviously does not account for all injuries and illnesses that require evacuation from the Iraqi theater, though I should note that the Army numbers don't necessarily mean 13,263 troops were evacuated--apparently a soldier could be evacuated multiple times (e.g., from Iraq to Germany, and then from Germany to the US). Still, it's clear that the American people aren't getting the whole story.

Just for comparison, between January, 1965, and April, 1966, there were 14,241 medical evacs from Vietnam according to the Army¹. Wow, not that many more than what we've seen in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Tell me again how we're not really stuck in a quagmire?

ntodd

1 - Again, these figures appear to only include Army personnel evacuated to Army facilities, and probably represent multiple evacs for each soldier.