Location: Afghanistan

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Launched in 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) stands out as one of the largest, internationally coordinated global public health major projects conducted to date, with cumulative spending of over $16.5 billion for 1988–2018, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). More than 30 years later, stubborn outbreaks of wild poliovirus still occur in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where cases have been increasing since 2018. The global eradication of polio continues to be an elusive goal.

• share
• favorite_border

The latest episode of The President’s Inbox is live. This week, I discussed the U.S. role in Afghanistan with Carter Malkasian, former special assistant for strategy to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Barnett Rubin, senior fellow and associate director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

In addition to caring for U.S. troops and coalition forces during conflicts in the Middle East, U.S. military surgeons also provided humanitarian surgical care to nearly 6,000 local national Afghan adult patients over the course of a decade, according to a study published Sept. 13 in JAMA Surgery.

• share
• favorite_border

Research lays groundwork for large VA study on respiratory health in Iraq, Afghanistan Vets

• share
• favorite_border

In a Veterans Affairs study of more than 300 enlisted Army National Guard and Army Reserve members who had deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, a majority reported symptoms consistent with a condition known as chronic multisymptom illness (CMI). The data were collected a year after the soldiers returned home.

• share
• favorite_border

New paper published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons lays out what military surgeons need to sustain surgical skills for both environments.

• share
• favorite_border

Risk factors for regular Army suicide attempts by enlisted soldiers and officers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been identified, and socio-demographic factors, length of service, deployment history, and the presence and recency of a mental health diagnosis are among the primary predictors, according to a study published July 8 in JAMA Psychiatry. Enlisted Army service members in their second month of service were at greatest risk for attempting suicide.

• share
• favorite_border

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, US combat support hospitals treated at least 650 children with severe, combat-related head injuries, according to a special article in the July issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Suicide risk is higher among military personnel with more lifetime TBIs, even after controlling for clinical symptom severity. Results of the study show that multiple TBIs, which are common among military personnel, may contribute to increased risk for suicide.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

A new study on mental health in Afghanistan looks beyond the effects of its 12-year war and identifies the root causes of mental distress and anxiety among its citizens: poverty and vulnerability.

• share
• favorite_border

Ronald M. Levin, JD, administrative law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, recently testified on the REINS Act before the House Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law. “Under the REINS Act, the dysfunction that now afflicts Congress in the enactment of laws would spread to the implementation of the laws,” he says.