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Sweltering heat. Suffocating sandstorms. Parasitic infection. Physical injury. Those are just a few of the harsh realities of daily life for approximately 1,000 Canadian soldiers stationed in southern Afghanistan where, for the past four months, they have participated in seek-and-destroy missions against the remnants of Taliban and al-Qaeda forces.
Not surprisingly, those same health hazards have made life very interesting for two Canadian military doctors--Major Dr. Dan Vouriot and Captain Dr. Roger King--whose job is to keep our front-line troops in fighting form.
"This is a challenging environment to work in, no doubt about that," Dr. Vouriot said in a telephone interview from the doctors' tent in the Canadian military base at the Kandahar airport in late May. "So far, though, we've managed to stay in pretty good shape."
That wasn't necessarily the case in early February, when the physicians deployed with the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, an Edmonton-based infantry unit, joined the U.S.-led task force at Kandahar.
Bolstered later by elements from the PPCLI's 2nd Battalion in Winnipeg and other special landforce units, the Canadian contingent's role is, in addition to helping fight a furtive enemy, to provide airfield security and deliver humanitarian aid to Afghan civilians.
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Though training for the mission began in November, many if not most of the Canadian soldiers, like other allied troops, were affected by the rudimentary conditions at the fortified tent city in the days following their arrival. "Initially, a lot of the pathology we saw was related to hygiene and close living conditions," explained Dr. Vouriot, medical commander of the brigade group based in Edmonton, where he also practices emergency medicine at both the University of Alberta Hospital and the Royal Alex.
A former medical officer of the 2nd Battalion (now Dr. King's regular...