Photo By Sgt. 1st Class James Lilly | U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Timothy Johnson, left, of Hartford, Iowa, and U.S. Army Sgt....... read more read more
BAGRAM, Afghanistan – There are many ways a soldier can save another soldier’s life, and some do not involve performing a heroic act in combat or care under fire.
For example, blood donated by service members in the United States is stored, shipped and maintained by members of the 4224th U.S. Army Hospital Blood Support Detachment. Detachment soldiers forward deployed at Bagram and Kandahar Airfields, supply blood to patients throughout Afghanistan.
U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Chaumont, the 4224th’s operations noncommissioned officer from Columbia, Mo., said the blood his detachment uses in Afghanistan is a completely self-sustaining operation. This means soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines donate the blood at stateside donor centers that is used by their injured comrades in Afghanistan as part of the Armed Services Blood Program.
“What we do is receive and transfer blood to our downrange facilities,” U.S. Army 1st Lt. Rodrick Clayton, the detachment’s commander from Austin, Texas, said.
“But we also do a whole lot more than that. Not only do we receive blood and manage where it goes and make sure we’ve got enough blood at the right place at the right time, we also do a lot of testing for transfusion transmitted diseases to make sure our products are safe. And we do a lot of apheresis (platelet collection) here in theater.”
U.S. Army Sgt. Sandra Alonso, a laboratory specialist from Austin, Texas, collects blood platelets at the Heathe N. Craig Joint Theater Hospital. Platelets are one of the four blood products the detachment maintains and ships to locations throughout Afghanistan. The other three are plasma, red blood cells and cryoprecipitated antihemophilic factor.
Alonso said the platelets are extremely valuable because they have a coagulatory, or clotting nature, which is useful in treating many of the types of trauma injuries from the battlefield.
“We get a lot of trauma patients with gunshot wounds, or soldiers who have one or more amputations from an IED attack,” Alonso explained. “Platelets are kind of like a glue – they’re very sticky and they help fill holes, in layman’s terms. They help repair connective tissue like bone, tendons and muscle fibers – they’re really useful here.”
Whereas a donor must wait two months after giving blood, platelets can be collected weekly once a service member has been screened, Alonso said. She said the detachment maintains a database of several hundred donors, but is always looking for new donors. Soldiers interested in donating platelets can stop by the hospital for a screening, Alonso said, but they must have more than 90 days remaining in country.
Another function of the 4224th USAH BSD is running a laboratory at Bagram Air Field. At the lab, U.S. Army Sgt. Carli Freese, a laboratory specialist with the 4224th from Stout, Iowa, said blood and platelets are tested, and frozen blood is thawed for use.
“Basically what I do in this section is mainly infectious disease testing for different units of blood, and we have machines that thaw out the blood as well,” Freese said.
She said the frozen blood can be stored for 10 years, and must be used within two weeks when thawed. To use the blood, a freezing additive called glycerol must first be removed from the blood via a machine, Freese said. She said the blood and platelets are tested for several diseases which can be spread by transfusion.
When an emergency occurs, Freese said the lab specialists will immediately gather blood from a pre-screened list of donors. She said the lab then tests the whole blood units before it is administered to a patient.
“We do the rapid testing on it,” Freese explained. “It’s very chaotic (emergency blood drives), but it’s organized chaos.”
The emergency blood drives are perhaps one of the most significant duties the detachment performs. In Kandahar, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Timothy Johnson, a laboratory specialist from Hartford, Iowa, is in charge of organizing the emergency blood drives there.
Johnson offered the example of a Marine who lost three limbs in a recent improvised explosive device attack where his work paid huge dividends.
“We had an emergency whole blood drive on the 15th of June,” Johnson said, noting the injured Marine’s command sergeant major was the first Marine in line waiting to give his blood.
“We called in several soldiers; the quick response was great. We collected 27 whole blood units. The units that we collected directly saved that Marine’s life. That gives you a great feeling.”
| Date Taken: | 08.02.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 08.02.2011 20:59 |
| Story ID: | 74718 |
| Location: | BAGRAM AIR FIELD, AF |
| Web Views: | 497 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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