Stoute Reports from Iraq

Sixty-eight kilometers north of Baghdad, in a building once part of Saddam Hussein’s main air force base, Dr. Gregory Stoute, associate professor of general dentistry and director of minority affairs, is practicing dentistry under vastly different conditions than ever before.

“Our site daily is affected by mortar fire,” says Stoute. “The dental clinic is marred with bullet and shrapnel marks.”

Dr.—a.k.a. Colonel—Stoute is Officer-in-Charge of the Logistics Supported Area (LSA) Anaconda Dental Clinic at Balad Airbase in northern Iraq. At Anaconda, the largest dental clinic in the Iraqi theatre, Stoute is responsible for scheduling and workflow management and patient care including emergencies, hygiene, oral surgery, routine restorative procedures and limited removable prosthetics.

The clinic’s staff of 22, including seven dentists and two hygienists, per week averages 300 patients. Receiving services at the clinic are US and Iraqi military and foreign and national contract workers. Although the landscape surrounding Balad is nothing like Boston’s, Stoute says the clinic’s equipment is similar to that used at BUSDM’s dental health centers, including a digital X-ray.

Stoute went to Iraq as Commander of the 455th Medical Company, a US Army Reserves unit out of Devens, Massachusetts. Although he has spent a handful of weeks with the Reserves in Central and South America, Iraq is his first major deployment. Stoute has been in the Reserves since 1984 and was on active duty in the Air Force from 1975-79, during and after dental school at Tufts University.

Having left for Iraq in early August, Stoute expects to return to Massachusetts in December. We wish him the safest possible return.