[A-List] UK sub-imperialism: sickening

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

It was once fashionable, during the Wilson/Callaghan era, to deride
Britain as the "sick man of Europe". It seems that Blair is turning
nasty rightwing propaganda into reality.


More than 10,000 British soldiers too sick or unfit to go to war
IAN BRUCE
The Herald, 14 August 2002

MORE than one in 10 soldiers in Britain's understrength and overstretched
Army are too sick or unfit to fight, it was revealed yesterday.

A total of 10,366 troops are currently classed as below minimum standards
for frontline service, despite a huge increase in private medical care for
military personnel which has sent the Ministry of Defence's annual bill
soaring from £160,000 to £2.4m.

Paul Keetch, the defence spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, which
disclosed the figures, yesterday blamed the increasingly dilapidated
military medical service left by successive cost-cutting exercises for a
situation "reaching crisis levels".

He added: "The British Army is not big enough to have 10,000 soldiers out of
action and not feel the effects. Our forces are under enough pressure as it
is. The MoD's medical policies are clearly failing the men and women in
uniform.

"After a decade of cuts, the dedicated members of the defence medical
services can offer only a shadow service, relying on allies in the field and
private healthcare at home."

Defence chiefs announced two years ago that the MoD would pay for private
medical care to bypass existing waiting lists and return service personnel
to fighting fitness as soon as possible.

At that stage, the sick list across the three armed services stood at 15,450
- representing 8.2% of the Army, Navy and Air Force combined 189,418
strength. Two years and £5m of taxpayers' money later, the figure had risen
to 17,394 or 9.3% of the reduced 187,743 total.

Recruiting is down in all three armed services and the Army is 7419 short of
its required establishment.

The remaining uniformed medical specialists are between 50% and 90% below
operational levels. More than 30 consultants have left in the last two years
and only two have been recruited in their place.

A recent £100,000 advertising campaign aimed at encouraging doctors to join
the colours failed to attract a single candidate.

Even if every full-time military doctor from all three services was deployed
to a major war zone such as Iraq, the British Army would be able to field
just 18 surgeons, 29 consultant anaesthetists and eight orthopaedic surgeons
to deal with thousands of potential casualties.

Neil Cripps, a former naval surgeon commander, said it would now be
impossible to deal effectively with the scale of wounded from even the
Falklands or Gulf campaigns.

"If there is a war in Iraq, I have no idea how the medics will cope. You
can't simply drag a surgeon out of an NHS city hospital equipped with all
mod cons and expect him to operate in combat zone conditions where
everything is in short supply and chaos is the order of the day," he said.

Current MoD plans foresee mobilisation of a number of part-time territorial
army field hospitals manned by NHS staff in the event of a high-intensity
conflict to supplement the dwindling regular units.

Critics insist that there are still too few medics with basic military
training and that even combining regular and territorial resources would be
insufficient to cope with heavy casualties from chemical or biological
attacks.

Bernard Jenkin, the shadow defence secretary, last night described the MoD's
medical policy as " a waste of precious defence resources" and said the
overstretch was " worrying".

The MoD insisted that it was unlikely that the UK would be committed
unilaterally to a conflict entailing heavy casualties and that in any
foreseeable action, allied nations would provide medical cover to plug the
gaps in British resources.

Several countries provided field hospitals and logistical support rather
than combat units during the 1991 Gulf war.