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Report: VA office denies 90 pct of Gulf War illness claims

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A federal report shows that a Veteran Affairs office in New Mexico during the 2015 fiscal year denied more than 90 percent of benefit claims related to Gulf War illnesses, marking the ninth-lowest approval rating among VA sites nationwide. The Albuquerque Journal reported (http://bit.ly/2vYDwrD ) earlier this week that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' Albuquerque office denied 592 of 640 Gulf War illness claims in 2015, which is the latest yearly data available. The report released in June from the Government Accountability Office also found approval rates for Gulf War illness claims are one-third as high as for other disabling conditions. Gulf War illness was first identified in soldiers returning home from Operation Desert Storm and Operation Desert Shield in the early 1990s. ___ Information from: Albuquerque Journal, http://www.abqjournal.com