More British troops surviving wounds

The government is sending army brain surgeons to Afghanistan for the first time to try to reduce lasting disability for soldiers who these days survive combat injuries that would once have killed them.

Defence officials said on Thursday improved body armour and better, faster medical care meant the ratio of wounded to dead in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was higher than ever before.

But some survivors have been heavily brain-damaged or physically disabled.

"We have seen two dozen individuals survive when conventional medical wisdom said they would die," Surgeon General Lieutenant-General Louis Lillywhite told a press briefing at the Ministry of Defence in London.

"My main effort is therefore switching from ensuring survival to improving quality of survival. For example, we are now deploying neurosurgeons into Afghanistan which we would not have done before."

Currently, British troops in Afghanistan are treated by more general surgeons and doctors who have decreased death rates from the around one in four wounded that would traditionally have been expected to around half of that.

Britain has lost 174 personnel in Iraq and 87 in Afghanistan.

With casualties mounting particularly since Britain intensified operations in southern Afghanistan in 2006, some British newspapers have attacked the quality of care received by the wounded - who are cared for within the civilian state National Health Service (NHS).

Britain closed its Cold War-era military hospitals in the 1990s, instead opening small military units at NHS hospitals including a large centre in Birmingham.

Some injured woke up on civilian wards with their only previous memory being inside an armoured vehicle or in battle on the streets of Basra or in the mountains of Afghanistan's Helmand province, and complained that non-military staff and patients did not understand them.

Officials said the number of military nurses had been substantially increased. More family members were being accommodated at Birmingham at public expense, they said.

"It is important in terms of the guys and girls on the front line knowing they will be looked after," said Brigadier Chris Parker, Commandant of the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine.

Officials said the quality of new false limbs meant some Royal Marines had returned to active duty including in the Middle East and Afghanistan after below-knee amputations.