Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Annual US Preventable Medical Mistakes versus 234 years of US Combat Deaths

Do you know any one who is outraged about the loss of life in Iraq? Of course you do...but where is the outrage at the loss of life in our US hospitals...year after year...after year...?

Since the start of hostilities in the American Revolutionary war, the United States has lost about 626,566 men and women from combat deaths in 234 years. It takes US doctors and hospitals just 3.1 years to cause the very same number of deaths to US patients.

Preventable medical mistakes and infections are responsible for about 200,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to an investigation by the Hearst media corporation. The report comes 10 years after the Institute of Medicine's "To Err Is Human" analysis, which found that 44,000 to 98,000 people were dying annually due to these errors and called for the medical community and government to cut that number in half by 2004.

Military casualties suffered by the United States of America in war or deployments:

Deaths ... Other... Wounded... Total.....

American Revolutionary War 1775–1783 8,000 17,000 25,000 50,000
Quasi-War 1798–1800 20
42 62
Barbary Wars 1801–1815 35
65 100
Other actions against pirates 1800–1900 10
21 31
Northwest Indian War 1785–1795 1221+
458 1679+
War of 1812 1812–1815 2,260 ~17,000 4,505 ~25,000
First Seminole War 1817–1818 30



Black Hawk War 1832 60+



Second Seminole War 1835–1842 328



Mexican–American War 1846–1848 1,733 11,550 4,152 17,435
Third Seminole War 1855-1858 26



Civil War: total 1861–1865 212,938



Union
140,414 224,097 281,881 646,392
Confederate
72,524



Indian Wars 1865–1898 919
1,025

Korean expedition 1871 3
9 12
Spanish–American War 1898 385 2,061 1,622 4,068
Philippine–American War 1898–1913 1,020 3,176 2,930 7,126
Boxer Rebellion 1900–1901 37
204

Mexican Revolution 1914–1919 35+
70

Occupation of Haiti 1915–1934 146
26+

World War I 1917–1918 53,402 63,114 204,002 320,518
Northern Russian Expedition 1918-1920




American Expeditionary Force Siberia 1918-1920




China 1918; 1921; 1926-1927; 1930; 1937 5
78 83
US occupation of Nicaragua 1927-1933 48
68 116
World War II 1941–1945 291,557 113,842 670,846 1,076,245
China {Cold War} 1945-1947 13
43 56
Berlin Blockade 1948-1949
31


Korean War 1950–1953 30,880 2806 92,134 128,650
Russia {Cold War} 1950-1955 32
12 44
China {Cold War} 1956 16

16
Bay of Pigs Invasion 1961 4

4
Vietnam War 1957–1973 47,424 10,785 153,303 211,454
Invasion of Dominican Republic 1965-1966 13
200 213
El Salvador Civil War 1980–1992 9
35

Beirut deployment 1982–1984 256
169

Persian Gulf escorts 1987–1988 39 0 31

Invasion of Grenada 1983 18 1 119

Invasion of Panama 1989 23
324

Gulf War 1990–1991 149 151 467

Somalia 1992–1993 29 14 153

Haiti 1994–1995 1
3

Bosnia-Herzegovina 1995-2004 1
6

Kosovo 1999 1 19 2+ 22+
Afghanistan* 2001–present 532 224 2,379 3,125
Iraq War

US Hospitals
2003–present

2003-present
3,788


540


46,132


50,460

~1,000,000