Monday, September 10, 2007

In case you missed Sunday's Globe: fighting for brain-injured soldiers, waiting for women veterans' clinic in Brockton, Edward Brandt

Families of severely brain-injured soldiers, including Maura Mannion Brodeur (with her son Vincent Mannion, left), are demanding specialized care for them in private facilities outside the military and veterans healthcare system -- a system that many families of veterans, and some leading medical specialists, view as badly overtaxed and no match for the nation's best rehabilitative hospitals.

Last January, the VA Boston Healthcare System held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Brockton VA campus (left) to celebrate a new treatment center for female veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress and substance abuse disorders. As of last week - nine months after the ribbon-cutting - the center is still not open. And the women's clinic at the Brockton VA campus, which serves 500 patients from across Southeastern Massachusetts, recently closed temporarily. VA officials say finding adequate staffing is the problem in both cases.

Dr. Edward N. Brandt Jr. (left), a physician who oversaw the federal government's first response to the AIDS epidemic and who initiated requirements for tamper-proof drug packaging after highly publicized Tylenol poisonings, died Aug. 26 at his home in Oklahoma City.

Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 06:05 AM

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