Senators: Conditions `unacceptable for sick reservists at Fort Stewart
More than 600 sick and injured Army reservists enduring long waits for medical treatment while living in spartan barracks should be sent to less crowded military facilities closer to their homes, two U.S. senators said in a report Friday.
The report by Sens. Kit Bond, R-Mo., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., blamed Army commanders for ignoring requests from Fort Stewart for additional medical staff to handle the needs of more than 20,000 active-duty and reserve troops who returned from Iraq in late summer.
It also said the Army needs to renovate the concrete barracks _ with open bunks, detatched toilets and often no air-conditioning _ being used to house sick reservists.
Regardless of the nature of the medical malady, these soldiers have been enduring unacceptable conditions for as many as 10 months, said the report by Bond and Leahy, co-chairmen of the Senate National Guard Caucus.
It would be far better to send these troops back home, the senators wrote. They could be assigned to another (military facility) closer to their families.
Bond and Leahy sent aides to Fort Stewart this week to investigate complaints by National Guard and Army Reserve troops that theyve had to live in substandard housing and wait for care while active-duty soldiers get treated first.
The Army post has 633 reservists on medical hold, which means theyre too sick or injured for regular duty but dont require hospitalization. The soldiers, 405 of whom got hurt or ill while deployed to Iraq, suffer a range of complaints from sprained ankles to stomach pains to a few with war wounds.
Army spokesmen at Fort Stewart and the Pentagon said they had no immediate comment because they had not yet seen the report. Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee and Lt. Gen. James Peake, the Army surgeon general, are scheduled to visit the south Georgia fort near Savannah on Saturday.
The senators report said the Army needs to send additional medical staff to Fort Stewart to ease the strain of caring for an entire division, the 3rd Infantry Division, thats recently returned from war.
And while the Army has approved $4 million to renovate the barracks on post, the work will take at least three months _ too long to help the sick reservists living there now.
Col. John Kidd, garrison commander at Fort Stewart, has said the barracks were built for National Guard troops to use during training, but the post has nowhere else to put the sick reservists.
The senators report quoted one unnamed Fort Stewart commander as saying the reservists were having to endure a go slow medical review system while living in get them the hell out of here barracks.
The report did not accuse Fort Stewart of giving preferential medical treatment to active-duty troops while making reservists wait _ which Fort Stewart has denied doing.
Many of the medically held Reservists, lacking sufficient knowledge of the militarys medical bureaucracy, chalk up delays in treatment to preferential treatment for active forces, the report said.
