The dilemma of caring for wounded Iraqis

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http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.iraqmedicine04jun04,0,3318572.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

Iraqis get the same initial treatment as U.S. and coalition forces, but not the follow-up care

BAGHDAD, Iraq // The young soldier would die, a fate ensured by the bullet that entered his right eye and shredded his brain. But unlike many other patients on the beds and gurneys of the U.S. Army's main combat hospital, this one would die quickly, without any heroic attempts to open his skull or take over his vital functions with machinery, without the chance to remain alive until his family or friends could gather.

If the doctors thought he had a chance of survival, they might have treated him differently. But the soldier's medical care was not determined solely by his injury, but also by his nationality. He was Iraqi.

The evolving nature of combat in Iraq - the persisting violence and the increasing responsibility heaped on Iraqi army and police forces - is creating a logistical and ethical tightrope for the American medical centers in Iraq, which exist to treat injured American service members but are seeing large numbers of Iraqi patients brought to their doors. snip

While Steinbruner spoke, a 13-year-old Iraqi girl named Hadeel was resting on a bed behind him, as doctors tried to diagnose what was apparently renal failure. A team of Marines had arrived at her house west of Baghdad a few days earlier conducting a census, and her father asked them if they could help his daughter. She was the fifth of his nine children to suffer the same symptoms. The other four died.