The Department of Veterans Affairs will now recognize a host of illnesses and cancers that U.S. military service members may be suffering or develop due to exposure in the Middle East. It means that men and women who served in the Gulf War in the 1990s and the post-911 actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, will automatically receive paid medical care for 23 named conditions.
The VA now presumes that any military member who served in the Middle East during those actions could suffer from acute and chronic leukemias, myelomas and urinary tract cancers.
“Burn pits for one in both Iraq and Afghanistan,” said David Nieradka, a Green Beret who served in both countries, and now works as coordinator for Veteran Village in Bend. “There were huge burn pits. That’s how to we took care of the trash. There wasn’t much foresight into potential hazards burn pits created.”…