NGWRC Press Release Aug 31, 2009

The Department of Veteran Affairs needs to act quickly to gain the trust of the Gulf War Veterans.

The National Gulf War Resource Center calls upon the Secretary to form a panel of veterans from the Gulf War Groups, VA staff and outside researchers that will create new guidelines on how the VA will deal with the Gulf War veterans in all areas of the VA. They should evaluate effectiveness in research, training, health care, outreach, and problems in compensation.

A Critical need is the updating of training for health care professionals in regards to Care of the Neurotoxin damaged Gulf War Veteran i.e. diagnosis and treatment. There has been no training or an educational program for VA Health Professionals that contains the most updated research on Gulf War illness and this is a critical need for the gulf war veteran to get the best health care within the next year.

Too many gulf war veterans have had their claims denied because the raters are not following the Rating manual on gulf war veteran claims, again immediate efforts are needed within the year.

NGWRC would like to see the VA address as a priority for the Gulf War Veterans. We need better training of doctors to help the veteran.

We need better training of the way to ensure proper adjudication of claims, and we need to make sure that research goes toward diagnosis, biomarkers, and treatment only and no more research into fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue are stress related program.

The Department of Veteran Affairs funded research on Gulf War Illness, where the records show that a lot of research done had little to do with Gulf War illness. All new research effort must be focused and targeted in the right direction, treatment. Most of the money that has been used to date went to research trying to show stress was the problem; even though research was showing just the contradictory, or studies that do not have anything to do with gulf war illness.

Gulf War veterans are sick and they are tired of having research that has not helped them. They do not need any more research dealing with chronic fatigue syndrome, Fibromyalgia, ALS, stress or PTSD. What the veterans are calling for is diagnosis and treatment. Gulf War veterans want to have their normal life back.

They do not want to be living on the government compensation of $2600 a month. Many veterans have college education that could actually net them employment in the range of 3 to 4 times that amount of money, but because of this illnesses and the poor cognitive function, they are not able to function for any duration of time to hold down a job to earn a living at the appropriate level