HELMAND, Afghanistan (Feb. 14, 2010) U.S. Air Force Surgeon General, Lt. Gen. Charles B. Green (third from left), U.S. Navy Surgeon General, Vice Adm. Adam M. Robinson Jr. (fourth from left), U.S. Army Surgeon General, Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker (fourth from right), with USFOR-A Commander General David H. Petraeus during a tour of military medical facilities in Afghanistan. Courtesy photo. (Released)
By Vice Adm. Adam M. Robinson, the 36th Surgeon General of the United States Navy and Chief of the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.
The U.S. Navy, Army and Air Force Medical Departments are moving expeditiously with a great sense of urgency to field an unprecedented Magnetic Resonance Imaging Machine (MRI) capability for our forces in Afghanistan as part of an overall comprehensive approach to diagnosing and treating concussive injuries on the battlefield despite the claims made recently by USA Today (No MRIs To The Rescue Yet For War-Zone Brain Injuries, USA Today, April 15, 2011).
I and my fellow Surgeons General remain fully supportive of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs’ initiative to send MRIs to Afghanistan to help our wounded personnel cope with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). We recently returned from a trip to Afghanistan to meet with all the senior military medical and line leadership in the region to discuss the challenges of fielding this capability in depth. This is a complex and unprecedented acquisition issue and we are working hard to push the system to field this equipment as soon as possible while ensuring it will do the job we intend it to do while operating in a combat theater. Through hard work and innovation, we plan to field this capability in August – only 9 months after we were asked to do something never before attempted. I am proud of the joint team that is working feverishly to make this procurement action possible in such a short period.
Unlike commercially available MRI equipment, the MRI machines being procured for use in Afghanistan are not something that can be purchased at the corner store. These devices have to be designed from scratch to operate safely and reliably in an active battlespace and under austere conditions. As such, they need to be built from the ground up to account for the unique working environments and meet size and weight requirements in order to be capable of being airlifted into theater.
We continue to aggressively address every element involved including engineering, logistical and technical issues while also simultaneously working the challenges of transportation, personnel, training, shielding and sustainment requirements to ensure a positive outcome. This is akin to building the deck of a ship after it has set sail. While we would like to have this capability in Afghanistan tomorrow, it is not an easy task but one we know we can meet.
Military medicine has no greater responsibility than caring for our service members and their families, whenever and wherever they need us. We understand that preserving the psychological health of service members and their families is one of the greatest challenges we face today. We also know that nearly a decade of continuous combat operations has resulted in a growing population of service members suffering with TBI. This has been the subject of extensive study and medical treatment attention and we continue to aggressively pursue improved screening, surveillance, treatment, education and research to discover innovative methods for the timely and accurate diagnosis and management of brain injuries. We also recognize the importance of collaboration and partnerships and our efforts include those coordinated jointly with the other Services, the Veterans Administration, as well as, leading academic and research institutions.
While there is no clinical requirement for MRIs in battlefield trauma care, they will be informative and may lead to cutting-edge discoveries in the diagnosis, treatment and enhanced follow-up care for our wounded personnel with TBI. We will continue to push as hard as possible to discover new methods for the accurate and timely diagnosis and management of brain injuries to help our men and women in uniform.
It is our duty – our obligation and our privilege – to promote, protect and restore the health of our Sailors, Marines, Soldiers and Airmen. It is the hard working and skilled medical personnel of the military health system that are there caring for our wounded from the point of injury on the battlefield through their whole recovery. Our medical advancements and heroic work during ten years of war have led to a remarkable 97 percent survival rate for coalition casualties. Our people deserve nothing less and we will continue to give them everything we have.
