Current Event: Week of 1/14

“In Wider War in Afghanistan, Survival Rate of Wounded Rises”
C. J. Chivers
January 7, 2011

The article by C.J. Chivers tells of the current treatments of American casualties in the war in Afghanistan. In 2010 the rate was 7.9 percent, down from 11 percent in 2009 and 14.3 percent in 2008. The percentage rate is dropping due to “a series of lessons learned over nearly a decade of fighting two wars” say doctors who treat the wounded. Several of these tactics include having helicopters closer to fighting, having all soldiers trained in basic first-aid and a more frequent use of tourniquets and tracheotomies. Soldiers and medics are also becoming more comfortable with transporting victims with traumatic injuries, bomb wounds, for example. New equipment for the soldiers, such as heavy armored vehicles that are more resistant to explosives and fire-retardant gloves, boots and uniforms, help raise the survival rate by reducing the occurrence and severity of burns. Though all of these techniques help the physically wounded, the soldiers with mental and emotional damages cannot be treated with greater care, and though troops’ lives are being saved they may have a harder time overcoming the affect their wounds have on them later in their life back home (a missing limb, brain damage, etc.) This information was collected through observations and interviews with medics and military doctors from two journalists from the New York Times, who spent a month in Afghanistan to observe the treatments of the wounded.

I enjoyed reading this article, grim as the subject may be. The author filled his writing with interesting information, details and statistics, which I feel are important to include in a well written article. With the amount of things included, along with a description of treating a patient, the article describes of the writer’s time observing the war. It does not give the reader the feeling of being in the writer’s shoes, which may be comforting to some, but it does let one understand what it is like at the medical tent over in Afghanistan. At some parts, information becomes a bit staggered and choppy, showing that Chivers may have had so many details, he struggled to include them all. The article’s ending did feel a bit abrupt, however, the last sentence somewhat tied it all together.

Original Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/world/asia/08wounded.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=war%20in%20afghanistan&st=cse