MILITARY UPDATE
Troops to get health screening
Military Update focuses on issues affecting pay, benefits and lifestyle of active and retired servicepeople. Its author, Tom Philpott, is a Virginia-based syndicated columnist and freelance writer. He has covered military issues for almost 25 years, including six years as editor of Navy Times. For 17 years he worked as a writer and senior editor for Army Times Publishing Co. Philpott, 50, enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1973 and served as an information officer from 1974-77.
By Tom Philpott
Defense officials are determined to protect U.S. forces that brought down Saddam Hussein from becoming victims of Gulf War Syndrome II.
Thousands of veterans from 1991, the war that drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait, later became ill, suffering a range of symptoms, from nerve disorders to memory loss, that health officials eventually labeled Gulf War Syndrome.
Because of poor record-keeping, when health officials finally noticed a pattern of illness, researchers had difficulty determining the likely source of so many disabling conditions. Suspected causes varied from vaccinations and overuse of pesticides to exposure to oil-well fires and depleted uranium tank rounds. The mental strain of spending months in a harsh environment awaiting orders to go to war was another potential factor.
Veterans of Gulf War II won't face the same uncertainties, said Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, thanks to a "post-deployment health evaluation process" ordered under a department-wide policy memo signed in mid-April.
The goal is to screen every one of the several hundred thousand active duty, reserve and National Guard members who deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom. The health screen won't mean a complete physical but a three-part evaluation. One part is to have members complete a questionnaire on potential long-term health factors including exposure to environmental hazards, vaccines, pesticides, physical challenges and mental anxieties of being in a war zone.
Part two will be a meeting with a licensed medical provider. That could be a physician but more likely a medic, corpsman or nurse. The idea is to ensure "they are not just completing a self-assessment survey," Winkenwerder said.
The third part is collection of a blood dot, which would be available to researchers if veterans begin to show symptoms of illness with no obvious cause.
The reason for the evaluations, Winkenwerder said, "is to do right by our service members. They exposed themselves to great risk and harm. We owe it to them to ensure they have a comprehensive health assessment before they resume their usual sorts of duties."
SARS unconfirmed
A recent report from Hill Air Force Base in Ogden, Utah, that its clinic saw the first U.S. military case of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was "very premature and perhaps inaccurate," said Dr. David N. Tornberg, deputy assistant defense secretary for clinical and program policy.
The patient, a military retiree, had traveled to an unidentified country in Asia and fallen ill. The retiree was bedridden in a hotel and only returned to the United States after symptoms had passed, Tornberg said.
A sample of nasal washings, collected at the Hill AFB clinic April 16, tested positive for SARS but a throat swab and blood serum did not. The retiree appears fully recovered. No symptoms of the virus have been reported among family, friends, associates or Hill medical staff.
Tornberg called it a suspect case of SARS that can't be confirmed unless the retiree allows more testing. It couldn't be verified that the retiree has declined a follow up test but none was scheduled nor under way.
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