Preventive medicine keeps airmen on the job

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  • By Master Sgt. Scott Elliott
  • Air Force Print News
BAGHDAD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Iraq --  Expeditionary medicine is more than just medics treating trauma and illness at Camp Sather here.

It is all about prevention for Staff Sgt. Nigesa Scales, a medical technician with the 447th Expeditionary Medical Squadron.

“There is always the possibility of a disease being introduced to the area of operations,” Scales said. “When I arrived in July, a typhoid inoculation was not mandatory, but now the vaccination is required … . Knowing there could be an outbreak tomorrow keeps you on your toes.”

The squadron’s preventive medicine program runs the gamut. Workers ensure immunizations are timely for the nearly 1,500 airmen assigned here, inspect food deliveries to the dining facility, educate patients, and conduct field hygiene inspections of latrines and showers. They also provide post-deployment assessments to help medical providers diagnose illnesses caused by occupational exposures in the theater.

They even collect bugs.

“We catch sand flies and send them to Tallil (Air Base, Iraq) to have them checked for leishmaniasis,” Scales said. The parasitic disease can manifest itself in many ways, including a fever that may affect internal organs, ulcerous wounds on the skin, or disfiguring scars on the nose and mouth.

The disease has been found in sand flies here, but so far no one has been infected. Scales said the preventive medicine education program can take some of the credit.

“We (hand out) sand fly information cards … , and we’ve put a lot of information into the base newspaper,” she said.

The medics also ensure airmen know how to apply insect repellant to both their uniforms and body.

Airmen must beware of other creepy crawlers, such as scorpions and snakes, according to Scales.

“The rainy season is coming, and that means the snakes will be leaving the low-lying areas and moving into higher elevations,” she said.

Scales said officials ordered plenty of anti-venom, just in case.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for the preventive-medicine technicians is keeping tabs on the shot records of each airman assigned here. According to Scales, squadron medics administer about 80 vaccinations each week.

In a perfect world, everyone who deploys would arrive here with all of their required shots, Scales said, but that does not always happen.

“We do give a lot of initial anthrax and smallpox immunizations here,” she said. “Usually if someone arrives without their shots, it’s because of miscommunication.”

Most of the other shots given by the medics are for a patient’s second through sixth shots of the anthrax series, but they also stand by to immunize patients for Hepatitis A and B, tetanus, meningococcal and typhoid.

Scales said it is extremely important for airmen who deploy to have current shots and have up-to-date records, lest they find themselves on the receiving end of several needles for reinoculation.

“If people are not in the Air Force Complete Immunization Tracking Application data base, they need their yellow shot records so we can build (a) record,” she said. If they have no proof of immunization, they are going to get the shots all over again.

So far there have been no outbreaks of smallpox, anthrax or much of anything else. However, officials say that does not mean the medics are taking it easy. They have to be constantly ready for any medical contingency.

“We have to keep track of trends,” Scales said. “If a lot of people start coming in with intestinal virus or fever, we’d have to investigate to find the common denominator and the source, and then do something to stop it.

“There’s a lot of truth to the old saying, ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,’” she said.