Despite an Army order that front-line medics get special clotting bandages, some soldiers say they're still needed.

Lifesaving kits for GIs in short supply
BY MARTIN C. EVANS
Newsday
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 Wednesday, "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.

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, Wednesday 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.

"I would say so, and part of it was our difficulty in meeting capacity," said Bill Block, HemCon vice president of sales and marketing.

He said difficulty producing chitosan, a clot-inducing material extracted from shrimp shells that came to the market in 2002, limited production of the bandages to 12,844 units in 2003 and 39,373 units in 2004. Production remained slow until late last year, when a plant expansion boosted the year's production to 112,119 units. Block said HemCon produced another 70,000 units through the end of May.

"We couldn't get the military what they needed in the first year or two of production," Block said. "In 2003 and 2004, our yields were very low."

The Army purchased about 110,000 of the chitosan-treated bandages from HemCon last year, said Col. Barrett King, a spokesman for the Army Central Command. Barrett said the Army will buy another 10,000 per month through next May.

"I am confident that 170,000-plus chitosan bandages have been issued, and that is more than enough to provide" for all Army personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, King said.

In addition, some Army units on their own have acquired another type of coagulant made by a rival company.

There are about 132,000 U.S. troops serving in Iraq and about 23,000 in Afghanistan.

Kenney, whose Jacob's Light Foundation has been mailing care packages to soldiers since the 2003 death of her son, Spc. Jacob Fletcher, said she has collected about $5,000 in donations to purchase the clotting pads.

"I sit up wondering if they had the coagulants, would they have been able to save him?" she said.

"They told me they did all they could. And now I don't believe them."

Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Inc.

Scrounging to stanch bleeding
In Iraq, some U.S. troops must even resort to ‘cloak and dagger' to get clotting supplies.
By DAVID GOLDSTEIN
The Kansas City Star
June 9, 2006

"With as many bandages in country as there are, with the exception of a logistical challenge occasionally in moving them forward, no soldier should ever be without ..." "... When soldiers have to resort to phone calls, letters home, e-mails home to get vital equipment, that's a problem."

Lt. Col. Carl Ey, an Army spokesman John Goheen, spokesman for the National Guard Association of the United States

WASHINGTON  - Some combat units in Iraq have had to "scrounge" for lifesaving blood-clotting supplies despite the Army's assurances that adequate amounts are available.

An infantry officer in Anbar province asked friends back home last month to send him a supply of blood coagulants because his unit had none and could not get any because of budget reasons.

Medics, meanwhile, said they have purchased their own blood-clotting bandages and granule packets before leaving for Iraq, and have resorted to "cloak and dagger" to get more once they are deployed.

And some soldiers reportedly pooled their money to order the critical supplies directly from the manufacturer when they could not get them through normal channels.

"You reach a point where you've given up on the Army supply system and you just reach into your own checkbook or ask people for money to get supplies," said Sgt. Greg Papadatos, a medic with the New York National Guard, who spent a year in Iraq.

Blood-clotting agents slow arterial bleeding by evaporating the water in the blood.

"Uncontrolled bleeding is a major cause of death in combat," Army Surgeon General Kevin Kiley told Congress last year. "About 50 percent of those who die on the battlefield bleed to death in minutes..."

Clotting supplies became standard issue for Marine units in 2004. Last fall, Kiley said Army medics should carry five blood-clotting bandages, "combat lifesavers" - soldiers with additional first-aid training - should carry three, and all other soldiers should carry one.

The Army sends 10,000 blood clotting bandages to Iraq and Afghanistan every month and has shipped 70,000 so far this year, said Jaime Cavazos, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Medical Command. It sent 105,000 last year and 52,000 in 2004.

"The bandages are in the supply system," he said.

Spc. Sarah Torgersen, a medic with the Mississippi National Guard who spent a year in Iraq, said she saw training films on how blood-clotting agents work, but was never given any before deployment.

She "managed to scrounge" some clotting supplies from the Marine unit leaving the area in the desert outside Baghdad that her engineering battalion was taking over.

"Every grunt had a packet in his first aid kit," Torgersen said.

She eventually got some from the Army a few months later. But she said her unit had orders for the clotting bandages for the entire year but never got them. Fortunately, no occasion arose to use them.

"A lot of times the system was just too slow, so we would take matters into our own hands," Torgersen said.

Asked whether the surgeon general's order had been carried out, Cavazos said, "That's the question being asked. Once the supplies get to the theater of operations, it's their challenge to get it out to the troops."

Capt. Dave Dillon of the Missouri National Guard returned in March after nine months in Iraq. Trained as a combat lifesaver, he carried clotting bandages.

"What I didn't have, I had ready access to," he said. "But it would not surprise me that there may be some kinks in the supply chain."

Lt. Col. Carl Ey, an Army spokesman, said the problem may be more a "lack of communication" between soldiers and command.

"With as many bandages in country as there are, with the exception of a logistical challenge occasionally in moving them forward, no soldier should ever be without ..." he said.

Medics and other soldiers said they have run into several obstacles when they have tried to get additional clotting supplies: cost complaints, navigating the medical chain of command and bad logistics, which can leave clotting supplies far from where they would be needed.

The problem recalls the difficulty troops have faced with inadequate body armor and other missing equipment. Troops and their families have had to purchase their own protective vests and other supplies in a number of cases.

The officer who sought help from his friends asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. He said in an e-mail, "Medics at the aid stations have clotting agents in limited quantities. We do not have the agents on the line where we take the casualties."

He said his unit relied on helicopters to fly casualties to trauma centers. But sandstorms hamper those flights.

"It's during times when medevac is limited or during first moments of wounding that clotting agents are crucial."

After the military turned him down, his friends contacted the Jacob's Light Foundation, a group that aids soldiers, created by Dorine Kenney of Bay Shore, N.Y. A roadside bomb killed her son, Jacob, an Army paratrooper, in 2003.

In days, she raised $2,000 to buy 200 packets of coagulant granules and shipped them to the officer.

"I'm a Gold Star mother," Kenney said, referring to the 78-year-old organization of mothers who have lost children in military service. "To think there would be a loss of life because of a $12 or $9 package of coagulants just flips me out. I just can't see it."

She bought the blood-clotting supplies from the Z-Medica Corp., a Connecticut medical products firm that makes QuikClot, which comes in bandages and granules.

Chief Executive Officer Raymond Huey said the company has gotten requests similar to Kenney's "on occasion," but declined to discuss them.

John Goheen, National Guard Association of the United States spokesman, said soldiers were "resourceful ... but when soldiers have to resort to phone calls, letters home, e-mails home to get vital equipment, that's a problem. Is it widespread? It certainly does raise a red flag."

Michael Zacchea, a Marine lieutenant colonel who aided the unnamed officer's effort to get the blood-clotting supplies, said he knew very well the importance of having quick access to them. He was treated with coagulants after being wounded by shrapnel during a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Fallujah in 2004.

Zacchea, who works on Wall Street and belongs to the nonpartisan Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said, "They used blood coagulants to patch me up. It worked on me. ... It just makes me crazy that soldiers are spending their own money for blood coagulants. It just makes me nuts."

Pols eye funds for troops' bandages
BY MARTIN C. EVANS
Newsday Staff Writer
June 15, 2006

Acting on reports that soldiers in Iraq remain without special anti-bleeding bandages capable of saving lives, Sen. Charles Schumer is pressing for an additional $20 million in Army spending to ensure that all U.S. troops on the battlefield carry the field dressings.

Schumer plans to include that money in an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill, now before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"No one disputes that these clotting bandages are life saving in so many instances," Schumer said. "To have soldiers have to write home to ask their families to send it to them is terrible and troubling."

Schumer's proposal yesterday came as fellow Democrat Rep. Steve Israel of Huntington prepared to grill U.S. military leaders about the reported shortages at a hearing today before the House Armed Services Committee.

Soldiers in Iraq have reported trouble obtaining specially treated clot-promoting material capable of halting bleeding from severed arteries and other life-threatening injuries.

Last September, Army Surgeon General Kevin Kiley ordered the special bandages be carried by all Army combat troops. Army officials have said half of those who die on the battlefield bleed to death within minutes, before hospital care can be obtained.

Kiley specified that combat medics should carry five of the bandages; specially trained soldiers known as "combat lifesavers" should carry three.

Army officials have said the service has enough of the HemCon bandages to make them available to all soldiers, but acknowledged that distribution bottlenecks may be a problem.

Two types of clot-promoting medical dressings have been available since 2002. But the HemCon bandage that the Army chose proved difficult to manufacture.

The Marines chose a different product, making QuikClot, a standard issue in June 2004, more than a year earlier than the Army made HemCon standard issue.

Army officials had been critical of QuikClot because the material can get hot during treatments.

But officials at Z-Medica, the Connecticut-based manufacturer, said the Army placed a large order for QuikClot after Newsday wrote of reported HemCon shortages last week.

Acknowledges not all soldiers in combat have lifesaving bandages but pledges to increase supply
BY J. JIONI PALMER
Newsday Washington Bureau
June 16, 2006

WASHINGTON -- After initially downplaying a shortage of the special anti-bleeding bandages available to troops in Iraq, a senior Army officer acknowledged yesterday that some soldiers are in combat without the potentially lifesaving field dressings.

Maj. Gen. Stephen Speakes, director of force development, told a congressional panel that only medics and other lifesaving personnel were equipped with the essential clotting bandages, as suggested by the surgeon general of the Army. But other combat troops have been requesting them as well, and he said the Army is committed to supplying them quickly.

"You have our attention, sir," Speakes said during questioning by Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington) during a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on protective equipment for military personnel.

Israel and other lawmakers in the Long Island and Queens delegation recently began to push Army officials to address the problem after hearing that some troops were not equipped with the specially treated bandages that are designed to prevent victims from bleeding to death.

The lack of the bandages is especially pressing given that military officials say most troops who die in battle bleed to death before they reach hospital facilities, and that the bandages could curb the number of fatalities.

After yesterday's hearing, Israel said there are still "some unanswered questions" about why there is a dearth of the dressings, but that his priority now is to ensure that the Army's brass honors its pledge to expedite the product's distribution.

"I got the impression they clearly recognized there was a shortage," Israel said. "It was a frank admission; it shouldn't have taken two weeks to publicly recognize there were shortages, but I'm glad they publicly committed to end the shortages."

Israel said he received assurances yesterday from the Army that 117,000 bandages were immediately being sent to troops on the front lines. Additionally, he said, military leaders have said they will increase the monthly procurement from 10,000 to 20,000 units.

As the bandage shortage was being addressed in the House yesterday, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) was expected to offer an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill on the other side of Capitol Hill. The legislation would provide $20 million to purchase the bandages and require that all military personnel carry them.

"It is simply unacceptable to ask our troops to put themselves in harm's way and then not provide them with every possible tool to stay alive if wounded," Schumer said. "Nobody's family should have to ask for these on their own. There's no excuse for not providing these bandages and this will change all that."

Correction: The U.S. Army was in negotiations to purchase QuikClot coagulant material for troops in Iraq for some time before placing the order last week. A story Thursday may have given the impression the Army had decided only last week to acquire the material.