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Treatment
of Wounded Soldiers Criticized |
Posted:
03.07.07
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Investigative news stories describing inadequate treatment of
soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have sparked political
finger-pointing and the resignation of the top Army official.
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Reporters at the Washington Post and Salon.com found that wounded
soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan had to fight to get
treatment and lived in rooms infested by rats and mold at one
of the buildings at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington,
D.C.
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Patients'
descriptions of Walter Reed |
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Walter Reed, considered a premier treatment center for veterans
for nearly a century, housed outpatients -- patients deemed healthy
enough to live without constant medical supervision -- in rooms
with cockroaches, holes in the walls and ceilings, broken elevators
and little security.
 Army
Specialist Jeremy Duncan, who fractured his neck, nearly lost
his arm, lost a left ear and sight in his left eye, said, "It
wasn't fit for anybody to live in a room like that. ... You've
just come out of recovery, you have weaker immune systems. The
black mold can do damage to people, the holes in the walls. I
wouldn't live there, even if I had to. It wasn't fit for anybody."
Duncan was one of several soldiers who testified before Congress
about the situation, along with family members who said they had
written to their representatives in Washington for help but never
got any.
In the wake of the reports, Walter Reed's commander, Major General
George Weightman, was fired, and Army Secretary Francis Harvey
resigned under pressure from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
President Bush has ordered a review of conditions at the nation's
military and veterans hospitals.
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Increase
in traumatic brain injuries |
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Since the wars began in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003,
Walter Reed has treated over 5,000 wounded servicemen and women,
many with brain injuries.
Some estimates found that between 10 percent and 20 percent of
the 1.5 million veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
suffer a traumatic brain injury, although the U.S. Department
of Veterans Affairs says the numbers are not that high.
 Traumatic
brain injury, or TBI, is often the result of improvised explosive
devices or IEDs, used by the insurgency in Iraq against American
troops and other enemies.
When the bombs explode, the brain is shaken and tissue is damaged.
Symptoms range from sensitivity to light and noise to an inability
to walk and talk.
The condition is somewhat new because in past wars, without the
advanced body armor and other protections, soldiers were more
likely to die from such injuries.
"You've got great body armor on, and you don't die,"
Louis French, a neuropsychologist at Walter Reed, told USA Today.
"But there's a whole other set of possible consequences.
It's sort of like when they started putting airbags in cars and
started seeing all these orthopedic injuries."
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Media exposure |
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The treatment of soldiers with brain injuries came under public
scrutiny after ABC reporter Bob Woodruff released a documentary
"To Iraq and Back" that details his own recovery from
a near fatal brain injury suffered in Iraq in January 2006 when
his vehicle was struck by an IED.
 Many
of the families in Woodruff's report expressed frustration at
the lack of care TBI patients receive once they leave specialized
rehabilitation centers and return home.
Woodruff followed Army Sgt. Michael Boothby back to the soldier's
hometown of Comfort, Texas, and showed how Boothby's condition
quickly deteriorated while he awaited the arrival of the paperwork
that would allow him to continue his treatment.
"I'm saying that our country in general is unprepared. The
Department of Defense, the Department of VA, they're all unprepared
for the over 1.6 million veterans who have been through Iraq and
Afghanistan, are going to be coming home with injuries, traumatic
brain injury," Lieutenant Paul Rieckhoff, head of Iraq and
Afghanistan Veterans of America, an organization that advocates
on behalf of troops who are still serving, told the NewsHour Jan.
28.
Following the reports, the Veterans Affairs agency announced
that all injured soldiers will be screened for TBI and given the
appropriate treatment.
--Compiled
by Annie Schleicher for NewsHour Extra
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