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Medical team visits village, offering help where it can

Jul-14-2005 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT

Link to Full Article (subscription; also available in the 7/18 news stand edition
By Matthew Cox, Army Times

OLM AL MAR, Iraq – Capt. Jon Christensen carries some of the most up-to-date medical technology aboard his Stryker medical vehicle. The Special Forces-qualified physician’s assistant can treat everything from broken bones to infected cuts and sores, from bacterial infections to typhoid fever.

But most of the treatments he hands out during visits to tiny hamlets in the Tigris Valley have more to do with common sense than modern medicine.

The three Stryker vehicles that made up Christensen’s July 3 “MedCAP” visit drove from Qarrayah 45 minutes across open country before reaching this remote village of about 60 Iraqis.

MedCAP stands for medical civil assistance program, a practice that began during the Vietnam War. Christensen and his soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 8th Field Artillery Regiment’s battalion aid station have performed about 20 of these medical visits since their deployment to northern Iraq began in November.

In addition to his medical Stryker, two Anti-tank, Guided Missile Strykers from D Company, 52nd Infantry Regiment, an anti-armor unit attached to 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (SBCT), went along to provide security.

The village mukhtar greeted the soldiers as they unloaded their medical packs.

“Anybody that’s sick in the town, let them know I’m the doctor and I will see them,” Christensen told the village leader.

Soon villagers were trickling into the large carpeted room of the mukhtar’s home.

With the help of an interpreter, an old woman complained of pain as she pointed to her kidney area.

“She says when she drinks a lot of water, she doesn’t feel the pain,” the interpreter told Christensen.

He smiled and in a kind voice told the woman to keep drinking water as he offered bottled water.

“They think they need the medicine to get better, but they really need preventive medicine; most of it is education instead of medicine,” he said.

He treats some cases, but he encourages the people to see an Iraqi doctor. [...]


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