Dozens of soldiers injured in a drone strike on March 1 in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, are reportedly not receiving adequate medical care, as highlighted by an Associated Press report.
Service members deployed in the Middle East are encountering various challenges, such as bureaucratic obstacles, issues related to recognizing severe injuries, and insufficient planning for transporting the injured to hospitals. Following years of troop reductions in the region, there are no significant U.S.-operated medical facilities available, according to the AP.
Army Lt. Col. Arturo Lincón was among those injured, struck by shrapnel during the incident. He described how one piece of metal became lodged in his jaw, while another caused considerable damage, including severing an artery, putting him at risk for a stroke. However, despite the severity of his injuries, he was not transferred to the closest major military medical facility, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Instead, he was directed to an Army barracks and told to make outpatient appointments, enduring days without pain medication.
“I was kind of on my own, at least it felt that way,” Lincón shared with the AP.
The Pentagon and the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) did not immediately provide comments when contacted by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Meanwhile, another serviceman, Major Stephen Ramsbottom, waited over four months for MRI results concerning shrapnel removed from his head. Chief Warrant Officer 4 Rodney Bearman, who had shrapnel embedded from his face down to his legs, received limited care from Kuwaiti doctors and was then sent to stay at the home of a U.S. government employee. The risks associated with ongoing missile attacks from Iran complicated evacuation flights.
About ten days post-attack, injured soldiers, including Bearman, who found it difficult to eat or lie down, were transported on a cargo plane to Germany. Once there, Bearman discovered that they were not classified as wounded in combat, which meant they wouldn’t be hospitalized—this was reportedly due to a coding error.
“I never thought that if I was wounded, it would come to this… some sort of sacred trust I assumed would never be broken has indeed been broken,” Bearman, a thirty-year military veteran, expressed to the AP.
