elovabloke said:
spike7451 said:
.Lady Hermon raised the issue with Derek Twigg,the Veterans Minister.
At the bottom of the letter,she added a footnote'
"PS,I am embarresed -but not suprised- by the tardiness of the response from the MoD!It's the worst dept of the government to have to deal with by a long way"
spike - would be interested in Twiggs responce as Swiss Tony promised way back in October to re-introduce Armed Forces only wards and is still to act on it, my MP is looking into it with a visit to Selly Oak soon. But thats all for another thread.
Could this happen here? Article from The Sunday Times 4th March
From Times OnlineMarch 04, 2007
Squalor of the vetsâ hospital shocks USSarah Baxter in Washington
WHILE he was recovering from a double amputation at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, Latseen Benson, 27, met a parade of VIPs. Every time the president, the vice-president or the defence secretary passed by, the military hospital would be thoroughly scrubbed.
The improvements would not last long, according to Diane Benson, the mother of the injured Iraq war veteran.
âI wasnât so bothered by the rats, although there were a lot running around outside, but I really wanted his room to be swept and kept clean,â she said. âYou couldnât get people to mop the blood and urine from the floor while my son was there with his legs wide open.â
President George Bush said in his weekly radio broadcast yesterday he was appalled by the conditions at the prestigious army hospital and announced a nationwide inquiry into veteransâ care.
Military hospital chief sacked
General George Weightman was relieved of command of the Walter Reed hospital after a series of disclosures about the treatment of veterans
âThis is unacceptable to me, it is unacceptable to the country and itâs not going to continue,â he said.
Embarrassed by a series of articles in The Washington Post about the âother Walter Reedâ, the Bush administration was in full damage control mode this weekend.
Francis Harvey, the army secretary, was forced to resign by the defence secretary, Robert Gates, who declared that âsome in the army have not adequately appreciated the seriousness of the situationâ.
The head of the hospital was ousted, followed swiftly by his temporary replacement, who turned out to be every bit as implicated in the poor treatment of veterans.
The crisis at Walter Reed threw the spotlight on the 50,000 sick and wounded US veterans of the Iraq war, whose struggle with physical and psychological damage has taken place largely out of sight and out of mind. For a public tiring of the war in Iraq, it has come as a shock to discover that Americaâs war veterans are being shoddily treated back home.
Although the standard of intensive medical care at the hospital is widely praised by injured veterans and their families, they claim that squalid conditions, bureaucratic chaos and insensitive regulations have made the process of recovery appallingly stressful.
Staff Sergeant John Shannon, 43, whose eye and skull were shattered by a sniper in Ramadi, was sent to Walter Reed in November 2004. On arrival he was given a map of the grounds and told to make his own way to his room.
Badly disoriented and barely able to see, he had to hold himself upright by sliding against the walls, asking anybody he could find for directions. After treatment for his injuries and a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder, he remained stuck at Walter Reed for two years as an outpatient, but felt neglected by case workers.
âI thought, âShouldnât they contact me?ââ he said. âI didnât understand the paperwork. Iâd start calling phone numbers asking if I had an appointment.â
Marine Sergeant Ryan Groves, 26, an amputee who spent 16 months at Walter Reed, said: âWeâve done our duty. We fought the war. We came home wounded. Fine. But whoever the people are back here who are supposed to give us the easy transition should be doing it.â
Problems at Walter Reed have been known to officials at the highest level for some time.
Joyce Rumsfeld, the wife of the then defence secretary, made a surreptitious visit to the hospital at the urging of a concerned friend last October.
She attended a support meeting for the wives and mothers of soldiers known as a âgirlsâ time outâ and heard their complaints. At the end of the meeting, she asked a social worker whether her husband was getting the truth about conditions there â or whether the soldiers he met were being hand-picked to paint a rosy picture.
They were being hand-picked, the social worker replied.
When Walter Reed officials found out that Joyce Rumsfeld had been secretly invited, her friend â a frequent volunteer â was told she was no longer welcome at the hospital.
Much of the attention on Walter Reed has focused on the poor conditions at Building 18, a dilapidated outpatient facility full of mouse droppings, dead cockroaches, stained carpets, old mattresses and mould on the walls.
The underlying problem, according to injured veterans, is that the venerable 113-acre hospital has been overwhelmed by the number of casualties in a war that was supposed to be over quickly.
âA doctor told me he had seen 3,000 young men and women come through Walter Reed and he didnât know if he could take any more,â said Diane Benson in an interview with The Sunday Times.
Roughly two Americans were wounded for every one who died in the second world war. In Vietnam and Korea, the ratio was three to one. But, with striking advances in medical treatment on the battlefield, rapid evacuations by helicopter and better armour, soldiers who survive the first few minutes of an explosion now have a 98% chance of staying alive. In Iraq, seven soldiers are wounded for every one who dies, according to government figures.
Brady van Engelen, who works for Veterans for America, spent eight months at Walter Reed after he was shot in the head on patrol in Baghdad. âIâm guessing that 30 years ago, I would have died,â he said.
âThe hospital is completely overwhelmed by the number of injured,â Engelen said. âThey didnât forecast that there would be so many wounded.â
Walter Reed hospital is home to nearly 700 war injured who no longer need hospital beds but still need outpatient treatment.
In accordance with army rules, they are obliged to rise at dawn and present themselves for inspection despite their injuries.
âIt really bothered me. My son hated it,â Benson said. âHeâd say, âWhy are they making us do it?ââ
It was also an ordeal for psychiatric patients, according to Ron Justi, whose son Steve, 28, had a nervous breakdown. âA lot of guys were too drugged up to attend, yet they were threatened with disciplinary action,â he said. âThey hardly had the ability to function as soldiers. It was terrible to see the amputees trying to make their way to the lineup.â
Justi had high praise for the psychiatrists at Walter Reed, but said outpatients living in the hospital grounds or in apartments near the gates were routinely neglected. âThere werenât enough staff to follow up their treatment. Theyâd stop taking their meds and get sick again,â he said.
âThe hospital didnât understand what this war was going to be about and was unable to handle the influx of soldiers with physical and mental injuries.â
After spending eight months at Walter Reed, Steve Justi was released in October last year and denied compensation for his mental injuries. The army blamed a previous bout of mental illness at college â which its recruiters had been told about but had brushed aside.
Last week Justi was told he would be compensated after all, but it had taken a prolonged fight with the army bureaucracy to win his case.
Many patients at Walter Reed are trapped in bureaucratic limbo, receiving little treatment while their applications to leave languish unprocessed.
Van Engelen said that, after receiving intensive care for his head injuries, he spent six months waiting to be released because the paperwork was so overwhelming.
One soldier committed suicide while he was there, but the incident was hushed up. âIt was incredibly demoralising to go from being a high-level platoon leader in Iraq to just hanging around, waiting to leave.â
Van Engelen is pleased that the Bush administration has finally noticed the problems plaguing injured veterans. âWatching heads roll is not enough,â he said. âYou can fire all the people you want but there has to be more than cosmetic change.â
Comment from a reader
Furthermore, the US government has utterly failed to adjust to conditions on the ground after more than 4 years of war. There are still too few troops on the ground. And so now we see that our soldiers are treated with such neglect because the military health care system is too overburdened to provide proper care and support. No one has said this could not have been foreseen. And the White House can do nothing give us scapegoats.
