经济学人:关爱截肢人士 假肢上的生活

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　　关爱截肢人士

　　Life on a limb

　　假肢上的生活

　　A growing number of amputees is a sign of medical progress

　　越来越多截肢者的出现体现了医疗水平的进步

　　A GRISLY photo shows a soldier lying injured, the snow around him steeped in blood. Both his legs have been blown off. The blood is fake. His legs, however, really are missing. The picture is from a training exercise run by Amputees in Action, an agency for actors who have lost arms or legs. It provides limbless people to train the armed forces and the emergency services as they learn how better to deal with injuries sustained in the midst of fighting or accidents. Such training, along with improvements in care back home, mean that those who do suffer grievous injuries on the battlefield are more likely to survive.

　　一张令人扼腕的照片为我们展示了这样一幅画面：一名负伤的士兵倒在被鲜血浸透的雪地中，纷飞的战火令他失去了双腿。事实上，照片中的血是假，而那位士兵确实是失去了双腿。这张图片来源于由“截肢者在行动”的培训机构所组织的一次表演训练，这家机构旨在为失去双臂或双腿的特型演员提供中介服务。该机构为军队提供残疾演员，用以训练士兵以及教授急救措施，从而使他们习得在战斗或意外中如何处理其所受到的伤害。这样的培训再配以家中的精心照料，将意味着那些在战争中经受到严重创伤的人，将更有机会活下来。

　　Of the 12,000-odd amputees reckoned to have come back to Britain from the second world war, almost none had lost three limbs, says Jerome Church of BLESMA (formerly the British Limbless Ex-Service Men's Association). Soldiers with such injuries died in combat. Even five years ago, they probably would not have survived such trauma¹. Today, it is normal to do so. That is a mark of medical improvements on and off the battlefield, says Keith Porter, a surgeon and professor of clinical traumatology at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. Every year, people are surviving bigger injuries, says Professor Porter, and the rate of improvement is rapid. The treatments provided today do not appear in existing manuals: “We are writing the textbooks of the future.”

　　为英国截肢退伍军人协会（BLESMA）效力的杰罗姆?切奇说，自二战以来，已约有12000余名截肢者回到英国，而他们之中很少有失去三肢或以上的人，因为通常受到这样等级外伤的士兵，他们通常面临的就是死亡，甚至在五年前，受到这种程度外伤的人也很少能够活下来。但是在现如今，对于这类人来说，活下来是一件再正常不过的事情。基斯·波特是一名在伯明翰伊丽莎白女王医院工作的外科医生，并且是一名专攻临床创伤的教授。波特教授说，“这种情况无论是在战场上或日常生活中，都是医疗体系进步的标志。人们能够经受住越来越严重的外伤并存活下来，最后得到改善的几率也在逐年迅速攀升。今天我们所实现的治疗方法在现存的资料或手册中却难觅踪迹。”波特博士同时表示，“我们正在编纂相关教科书为未来的医疗事业提供帮助。”

　　Overall, those fighting Britain's wars make up a small proportion of the 5,000 or so major-limb amputations carried out in Britain each year, mostly as a result of diseases such as diabetes². But the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have led to a spike³ in the numbers of soldiers who have lost limbs. When Mr Church took over as chief executive of BLESMA in 2000, he assumed it was a fading organisation⁴. Most members were elderly veterans of the second world war. Since then, its ranks have swelled⁵ by about 300. In 2006-09, 54 combatants sustained partial or complete removals of a limb as a result of injuries in Afghanistan. In 2009-12 the number rose again to 192, almost half of them multiple amputations.

　　综上所述，每年这些在英国战争中受伤而截肢的人，仅占了英国全年五千名截肢者中很小的一部分，而其他多数为诸如糖尿病之类的疾病所致。但是阿富汗与伊拉克之间的冲突战争却使很多战场上的士兵失去了他们的四肢。当切奇先生在2000年出任英国截肢退伍军人协会（BLESMA）的首席执行官时，他觉得该组织毫无希望可言，而且其中多数成员是经历过二战的退伍老兵。在阿富汗战争以及伊拉克战争爆发后，组织人数激增至300人，在2006—2009年这三年间，阿富汗战役中共有54名战士进行了局部或全部的截肢，在接下来的2009—2012年间，这一数据已增加至192，近乎半数人接受了多处截肢。

　　Cuts to defence spending (8% in real terms by 2015) have had little impact on services for those afflicted⁶. In February the government announced it would spend an extra ￡6.5m on advanced prosthetics for them. Armed with such technology, many can pursue active lives. Those working for Amputees in Action, for instance, act in mainstream⁷ films and TV programmes as well as training exercises. John Pickup⁸, the agency's founder⁹, says it can be difficult to attract veterans because the Paralympic team is so determined¹⁰ to get soldiers, sailors and airmen (and women) who have lost arms or legs to join its athletes. That's welcome competition.

　　削减国防开支（预计至2015年将会下调8%）实际上并不会对这些截肢者的医疗服务造成影响，因为在今年二月政府已经宣布，将会投入额外的6,500,000欧元为他们提供先进的假肢，通过医疗科技的帮助，他们得以继续自由行动和生活。“截肢者在行动”公司为截肢者提供诸如在主流电影或电视节目中演出的机会，当然还有培训练习。作为机构创始人，约翰·皮卡表示，能够招收到老兵很不容易，因为残奥会代表队十分渴望那些失去手臂或腿的士兵，海员以及飞行员加入到他们的运动员行列中，不得不说，这是一场皮卡先生的公司与国家队之间的人才竞争之战。

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