Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 2, 1993 TAG: 9308020085
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium
The sixth biennial convention, which starts Wednesday, comes a week after the groundbreaking for the long-delayed Vietnam women's memorial in Washington.
More than a million women in the United States are military veterans, with nearly a quarter of them from the Vietnam era, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Jill Mishkel, an Army nurse who worked July 1970 to July 1971 with the 24th Evac hospital in Long Binh, said women veterans have not received the same treatment as their male counterparts.
"They never planned for women," said Jill Mishkel, a former vice president of Vietnam Veterans of America. "Women weren't considered veterans."
She said problems included hospitals that had few or no facilities for women patients. Women could not get complete physicals, and had to go elsewhere for breast exams or Pap smears, or else did not get them at all.
The Veterans Administration has corrected some of the problems, but many still remain, said Mishkel, now a nurse at Portsmouth General Hospital.
More than 600 delegates to the convention will consider 167 resolutions, said Bill Crandell, a spokesman for the organization, which was started in 1978 by a group of Vietnam veterans who felt deserted by Congress and other veterans' groups.
The association has more than 45,000 members, about one-tenth of whom are women who were either in Vietnam in the military or as civilians with the Red Cross and other organizations, said Joann Harkins, a convention committee organizer.
A total of 9.2 million men and women were in uniform during the Vietnam era, although about 3.4 million men and women served in the combat theater, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. About 230,000 women are Vietnam-era veterans.
by CNB