US Soldiers in Iraq Contract Disease
 

On top of everything else, they have this shit to deal with ( sorry if this is old news )

Now a new wave of unexpected horror, leishmaniasis, is arriving at WRAMC - which has the only accredited leishmaniasis lab in the United States - and its dedicated docs are burning the midnight oil to find a treatment. A model predicts that 1 percent to 4 percent of our soldiers in Iraq can expect to be hit by this potentially deadly parasite, delivered by the bite of infected sand flies as common in the Middle East as fleas on a wild dog.

So far, more than 500 soldiers have been diagnosed with "The Leish." Since there's presently no approved protocol for the docs in the field, most of those infected have been evacuated from Iraq directly to Walter Reed. And as each day passes, the medevaced casualties are increasing, as more of our grunts come down with this painful and sometimes deadly affliction.

The docs say it takes anywhere from weeks to months to years for the disease to manifest, and when it does, it's ugly - "huge, ulcerated nodules the size of a tumor on faces and hands and other body parts which leave long-term scars." Stricken soldiers can have as many as 20 to 30 festering boil-like sores.

http://www.military.com/Resources/Re...rth_031604.htm