Wounded newsman sheds light on Iraq veteran care
Source: Reuters
By Daniel Trotta NEW YORK, Feb 26 (Reuters) - The explosion in Iraq blew bits of rock into Bob Woodruff's neck, broke open his skull, and put the ABC News journalist in a coma for 36 days. Fourteen months later, Woodruff tells the story of his recovery in a prime-time special on Tuesday but rather than dwell exclusively on his own dramatic narrative, Woodruff turns the camera on Iraq war veterans who survived traumatic brain injury without national attention. Woodruff suffered traumatic brain injury and calls it "the signature injury of the war in Iraq," largely because combat troops in Iraq are so often exposed to improvised explosive devices. While Woodruff recovered much better than his doctors expected, many veterans cannot walk or talk and require painstaking therapy or permanent attention. He profiles some of them in a report that adds to concerns about the level of health care Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans receive after returning home. A Washington Post series this month exposed deteriorating conditions for outpatients at the premier U.S. military hospital, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, leading Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week to brand the level of care as unacceptable and the Bush administration to order a review. Many sufferers of traumatic brain injury find that after being discharged from major military hospitals, treatment in their hometowns is inadequate, the ABC special "To Iraq and Back" says. When an explosion "gets close to your head, even if you've got a really good helmet, you live but your brain gets whipped around," Woodruff told reporters on Monday in a promotion arranged by ABC, a unit of The Walt Disney Co. <DIS.N>. "It's something that is emerging out of this war unlike any war before." The Pentagon reports 23,677 military personnel wounded in Iraq and 1,118 wounded in Afghanistan. The Woodruff report suggests those numbers are incomplete because, once home, more than 200,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have sought medical assistance from the Department of Veteran Affairs, many of them for ailments related to brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder. Spokesmen for the Department of Veterans Affairs were not immediately available for comment.
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