NOVA's team spent weeks living day and night with the doctors, surgeons and military staff of the 21st Combat Support Hospital in Iraq.

NOVA's team spent weeks living day and night with the doctors, surgeons and military staff of the 21st Combat Support Hospital in Iraq. The film follows the daily drama of life and death in a tented hospital in the deserts north of Baghdad. Building a state-of-the-art hospital in the dust and heat is a remarkable achievement, but it represents only the start of the difficulties faced by the doctors and nurses of the 21st CSH. Relief at the lack of military casualties is soon replaced by high drama and difficult ethical decisions as Iraqi victims arrive, many of them children with horrific injuries caused by unexploded weapons. NOVA shows how innovations in battlefield medicine have transformed the survival prospects of such casualties, and provides an intimate story of the struggle for survival in a combat hospital.