Army investigates pneumonia cases in Iraq
Army News Service
Release Date: 8/05/2003
By Spc. Bill Putnam
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Aug. 5, 2003) -- The Army has dispatched two teams of medical specialists to Iraq and Germany to investigate why pneumonia killed two soldiers and put 13 other servicemembers in the hospital.
About 100 cases of pneumonia have occurred in Southwest Asia since March 1, said Col. Robert DeFraites, the chief of the Army's preventive medicine program, at a Pentagon press conference Aug. 5. That number, given the number of troops deployed there, is expected, he added.
Of those 100 cases, 14 soldiers and one Marine developed cases of pneumonia serious enough to be hooked up to ventilators and be evacuated to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, DeFraites said.
Three of the soldiers remain hospitalized and nine others have returned to duty, said Lyn Kukral, a spokesperson for the Army Surgeon General. The latest case of severe pneumonia occurred July 30. The two soldiers died in June and July, respectively, after serving in Iraq in different units.
Most cases of pneumonia occurred in Iraq, said DeFraites, other cases happened in Kuwait before Operation Iraqi Freedom, the others occurred in Qatar and Uzbekistan, DeFraites said.
The soldiers with pneumonia in Iraq were geographically dispersed throughout the country and came from different units. The cases were also spread over time, DeFraites said.
Two cases occurred in March; two in April; one in May; six in June; and four in July, he added.
Annually, about nine in 10,000 soldiers around the world have pneumonia that is serious enough to warrant hospitalization, said DeFraites.
The Epidemiological Consultation teams were sent last week by Lt. Gen. James Peake, the Army's surgeon general, to help Army medical staffs in Iraq and Germany determine what is causing the cases, said Kukral.
One team went to Landstuhl and the other team went to Iraq.
The teams Peake sent consist of doctors, epidemiologists, infectious disease specialists, laboratory officers and technicians and preventative medicine technicians.
Their job is fact-finding and analysis, Kukral said. The teams will review patient records, and laboratory results. They will also ask questions of medical staff in Iraq and Germany, and possibly the affected soldiers.
What's causing the recent cases is still unknown and that's why the teams are being sent, said DeFraites.
The Army has identified the fairly common "infectious" type of the disease called streptococcal pneumonia in two of the cases, he said.
A soldier can get that type through a viral or bacterial infection, DeFraites said.
The other type of pneumonia is a "noninfectious" type that can be environmentally caused, he said. If a soldier smokes cigars or cigarettes, or is in a dusty, sandy area -- like Iraq -- he will be more prone to the disease, said DeFraites.
If the teams determine that the cases are unusual in any way, they will make preventive or corrective recommendations, DeFraites said.
A young, healthy person dying from pneumonia is rare but it does occur, said DeFraites. From 1998 through 2002, 17 soldiers died from pneumonia or from complications of pneumonia. About 500 soldiers are treated for the disease everyear.
But the two deaths from the same disease within one month do raise alarms and that's the reason Peake sent the teams, DeFraites said.
"It's a fairly typical tool the surgeon general of the Army invokes to address this type of situation," DeFraites said, adding that teams are sent out "two to three times a year."
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
