[Infowarrior] - High-Tech Army Rehab Center Opens

[Richard Forno]

(amazingly, it's totally privately-funded.........rf)

High-Tech Army Rehab Center Opens
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/29/AR2007012900
188_pf.html

By MICHELLE ROBERTS
The Associated Press
Monday, January 29, 2007; 7:56 PM

SAN ANTONIO -- Of the roughly 20,000 soldiers injured since the start of the
Iraq war, more than 500 have lost a limb _ many of them in roadside
bombings.

On Monday, a $50 million high-tech rehabilitation center opened that is
designed to serve the growing number of soldiers who return from war as
amputees or with severe burns.

The privately funded Center for the Intrepid includes a rock-climbing wall,
a wave pool and a virtual reality computer system. About 3,200 people
attended a dedication ceremony, including Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and 2008 presidential hopefuls Sens. Hillary
Rodham Clinton of New York and John McCain of Arizona.

Clinton, a Democrat, said Americans are firmly behind the nation's veterans,
despite the rancorous national debate over the Iraq war.

"There is common ground on higher ground, and on that higher ground, we
stand to pay in full our debt" to those who were wounded in combat, she
said.

McCain, a Republican former Navy pilot who spent nearly six years as a POW
during the Vietnam War, said those maimed in battle can't be compensated
enough.

"We can only offer you our humility. You are the best Americans," said
McCain, standing before dozens of soldiers who entered the ceremony on
crutches or in wheelchairs.

The 60,000-square-foot, four-story glass building will allow the Army to
move its rehabilitation program out of the Brooke Army Medical Center and
into a separate facility.

"The Center for the Intrepid is going to let us keep advancing what we've
been doing," said Maj. Stewart Campbell, the officer-in-charge of
rehabilitation at Brooke. The facility tells soldiers "we're going to take
care of you for as long as you need us, to get you back to where you want to
be," he said.

At Brooke, amputees were being treated in offices and facilities carved out
of the larger hospital.

The new center includes a 360-degree virtual reality sphere to help soldiers
recover their balance and other basic skills, and a wave pool where they can
use wake boards to strengthen their backs and abdominal muscles.

Staff Sgt. Jon Arnold-Garcia, who lost part of a leg in a grenade attack,
got his first look at the rehab center on Sunday.

"This place is amazing, that the American people donated the money for
this," said the 28-year-old from Sacramento, Calif. He has been in
rehabilitation at Brooke since May, but he was eager to get to work at the
center.

"It doesn't look like a hospital," he said. "It's a place I can see myself
getting up and being motivated instead of walking hospital hallways with
doctors."

Prior to the Iraq war, amputees were generally given acute care by the
military and then turned over to the Department of Veterans Affairs, said
retired Col. Rebecca Hooper, program manager for the Center for the
Intrepid.

But since 2003, the military has kept those patients and made rehabilitation
part of its mission.

Amputee rehab programs are now being run at Brooke, Walter Reed Medical
Center and Bethesda Naval Medical Center.

The center was funded by private donations to the Intrepid Foundation, a
charity that has built dozens of houses to shelter families of wounded
soldiers while they undergo treatment.

___

On the Net:

Brooke Army Medical Center: http://www.bamc.amedd.army.mil/