Michaud takes 5-day tour of overseas military hospitals

U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud is returning to Maine Thursday after visiting military health care facilities in Iraq, Kuwait and Germany. The facilities are all in the chain of care for Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom service members.

Michaud, who is the chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Health, led a delegation of five other Congressman and Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake, according to a release from his office.

The hospitals he visited were:

• Kuwaiti Emergency Medical Facility, near Camp Arifjan Air Field, Kuwait
• Medical Aid Stations, Baghdad, Iraq
• Balad Theatre Support Hospital, Balad, Iraq
• Landstuhl Regional Medical center, Landstuhl, Germany

He issued the following statement Wednesday evening:

“I organized this trip so that we could see first-hand the level and quality of health care being provided to our active duty service members in Iraq and Afghanistan. We met and talked face-to-face with key medical personnel at these facilities to understand the challenges of combat health care in Iraq. It is crucial that my fellow committee members and Secretary Peake understand the health care services that our brave men and women receive before they enter the VA health care system. The care soldiers receive on the battleground, in medical facilities in areas of operation, and at hospitals in Germany and the U.S. is the foundation for what they will need when they enter the VA health care system.”

The five-day trip included meetings with Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, leaders of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq, and Brigadier Gen. Joseph Caravalho, the lead surgeon for the forces, along with Kuwait Ambassador Deborah Jones and Charlie Ries, a representative of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.

This is Michaud’s second trip to the region this year.