Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
More Soldiers Are Dying From The Heat, Yet The Government's Efforts To Safeguard The Troops Have Been Uneven
The medics loaded Sgt. Sylvester Cline into an ambulance with the air conditioning running at full blast. It was 4:20 p.m., 20 minutes after hed been helped off a live-fire training range at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, where it was 93 degrees and humid. Cline, an Iraq combat veteran, and two other soldiers were being evacuated to a nearby barracks to rehydrate and cool off after nine hours of drills on parched training grounds on that sweltering day in June 2016.Despite a forecast for extreme heat, base safety officers who prepared the daily risk assessment had decided soldiers faced only moderate danger. Later that morning, the temperature had reached 90 Fahrenheit, triggering black flag conditions, the militarys signal for a high risk of heat casualties. Commanders were supposed to allow at least 40 minutes rest for each hour of training, but they did not heed the requirement, an Army investigation found.(Hasemyer, 7/23)
In other news
The father of 1-year-old twins who died Friday after the police said he had left them in a hot car was charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. The father, Juan Rodriguez, 39, of New City, N.Y., was arrested and charged late on Friday, the police said. He left the children inside a parked silver Honda Accord in the morning in the Bronx and reported for his job at the James J. Peters V.A. Medical Center, officials said. (Schweber and Salcedo, 7/27)