Soldiers face neglect at Army's top medical facility

RAW STORYPublished: Saturday February 17, 2007

According to a report in Sunday's Washington Post, physically and psychologically damaged soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center are finding it difficult to get the outpatient care they need while awaiting either discharge or a return to active duty.

Dana Priest and Anne Hull write that, although the hospital sections at Walter Reed remain first rate, the outpatient section is beset by bureaucratic fumbling, and its physical facilities are run down or even in a state of decay. They state that "On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of 'Catch-22.'"

Excerpts:

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.
...
While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles, with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.

On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.

Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.

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