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Lifesaving kits in short supply

Despite Army order that front-line medics get special clotting bandages, soldiers say they’re still needed

BY MARTIN C. EVANS | Newsday Staff Writer

June 8, 2006

Nine months after an Army order that all combat soldiers would get lifesaving clotting bandages to curb bleeding deaths, some troops in Iraq are still calling home, asking friends and family to supply them.

Despite Army assurances that there are plenty of the bandages to go around, soldiers have written to say they haven't found their way to all of those on the front lines. And the manufacturer under contract with the Army acknowledged last week that early production problems may have spurred a shortage.

One platoon leader stationed in the Sunni Triangle west of Baghdad asked his college alumni association to send the bandages, saying his unit has never had access to them during his two tours there.

"We have no supplies of coagulating bandages and agents to stop arterial bleeding," the soldier wrote in an e-mail about a week ago.

"My unit does not have the budget to procure such supplies for our front-line soldiers," wrote the soldier, a second lieutenant who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. "Bleeding out is the leading cause of death for our soldiers."

Another soldier, Spc. Maghen Philbrook of Northport, Maine, said yesterday, "I didn't have one in September and I didn't have one six weeks ago."

"I never saw them over there," said Philbrook, who returned home in April after serving 15 months in Iraq with the Maine Army National Guard's 152nd Maintenance Co.

A Bay Shore woman whose soldier son bled to death in Iraq three years ago has taken up the cause, sending 410 clot-promoting bandage kits to the second lieutenant after hearing of his need for supplies.

"If I can prevent one ... knock at the door of a military family, I will do all I can to prevent them from living though the heartbreak I have had to live through," Dorine Kenney said.

Stanching wounds

About half of those who die on the battlefield bleed to death within minutes, before they can be transported to a medical facility, Army Surgeon General Kevin Kiley said last September in ordering that the bandages be supplied to all Army combat troops. He also specified that combat medics should carry five of the bandages and that "combat lifesavers" - soldiers who receive more extensive first aid training - should carry three.

At the time, his staff estimated that less than 10 percent of Army personnel had the bandages, according to Army Medical Command spokesman Jaime Cavazos.

U.S. Marines, on the other hand, made a similar, less expensive clotting product, the QuikClot ACS, standard issue more than a year earlier, in June 2004.

An Army spokeswoman, Betsy Weiner, yesterday said the service has adequate supplies of the coagulant bandage, which were ordered in large supply after Kiley's mandate.

"I cannot tell you that every soldier over there has one, but they are available to every soldier through the medical supply chain," Weiner said. "It is not a question of finances. We have more than enough."

But Army National Guard medic Sgt. Gregory Papadatos, of the Army National Guard's 69th Infantry, said a soldier contacted him from Iraq six weeks ago to ask for coagulant.

Papadatos, of Astoria, who served in Iraq with the 69th until September, said he planned to send some of the coagulant he brought home with him.

"New stuff doesn't go to the line medics first," Papadatos said. "It tends to stay at the medical clinics or aid stations and get hoarded. It's going to be quicker for him to get it from me than from his own supply chain."

Production problems

A spokesman for Portland, Ore.-based HemCon, which supplies the bandages under Kiley's order, acknowledged that his company's early struggles to boost production may have contributed to shortages.