Troops going to war face new risk: lack of key medical staff

Britain's armed forces are facing massive shortages of medical staff as they prepare for a possible war in Iraq.

The crisis is most acute in those areas that will be critical during battle, Ministry of Defence figures show. The shortfall ranges from 58 to 87 per cent among accident and emergency surgeons, anaesthetists and burns specialists.

The MoD is so worried by the shortfall that it has adopted drastic measures to attract more medical staff, including a £50,000 "golden hello" for some, and a radical overhaul of its pay structure. Staff at the Defence Medical Service (DMS) will no longer be paid according to their rank, but based on their experience, and the salary scales will be improved.

But senior MoD officials accept that the reforms, due to take effect in April, will be too late for a new Gulf war, which is widely expected to start before the weather in the region starts to become too hot from March.

The Government could call up all medical reservists in the event of a conflict. That would put enormous pressure on the National Health Service, already suffering from its own shortages, and, in any event, would not provide anything close to adequate numbers for a war.

Many regular military medical staff work at NHS hospitals manning primarily military but also civilian wards in peacetime under MoD rules. The dispatch of a hospital ship to the Gulf, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Argus, announced yesterday, with a 120-strong team of doctors and medics, has meant that one ward of Plymouth's Derriford Hospital must close.

The latest MoD figures show that overall number of regular medical service personnel, standing at about 6,500, is 23 per cent down on the planned full strength of 8,500. The total of volunteer medical reserves, currently at 4,829, is 36 per cent less than the projected total of 7,550.

Out of 872 posts for doctors in the forces, only 368 – less than half – have been filled. The worst gaps are among A&E staff, with 87 per cent of posts unfilled, anaesthetists with 81 per cent and burns specialists with about 70 per cent unfilled. Among nurses the shortage amounts to more than 800 posts, or 38 per cent.

So stretched are the resources that if the MoD mobilised all its full-time doctors for a war in Iraq, only 18 surgeons, 29 consultant anaesthetists and eight orthopaedic surgeons could be deployed for a 40,000-strong British force.

In recent deployments British forces have had to depend on medical facilities being provided by other countries. In Sierra Leone it was done by the Indian army working with the United Nations, and in Afghanistan by Germans, French and the Czechs.

The crisis is seen as a result of underinvestment and cuts, which the Government blames on the Conservatives.

Bernard Jenkin, the shadow Defence Secretary, said: "The Government has totally failed to live up to the commitment it made to the Defence Medical Services under the Strategic Defence Review. They have had five years to do this and they have not done so."