The Army is working to reduce the number of soldiers who cannot deploy because of illness, combat wounds, or injury, the service’s chief medical officer said during an Oct. 11 seminar in Washington, D.C. “Every soldier added to the pool of non-ready soldiers taps into the pool of soldiers who are,” said Lt. Gen. (Dr.) Eric B. Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general and commanding general of U.S. Army Medical Command, speaking before an audience at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition. The Army hopes to teach soldiers to take better care of themselves, so that military treatment facilities can shift their focus of services to that of injury prevention, rather than response to injury.
