Hepatitis C

[1CAVCCO15MED]

Do any of you know if this is considered service-connected for Vietnam? One of the guys from my company in Vietnam has it. We rarely had enough rubber gloves to go around so we didn't routinely wear them when treating casualties. We had the blood of hundreds on our hands in the course of a year and knowing what I know now it is a wonder we all didn't get it. Hepatitis is the one disease that can go through unbroken skin. Get an infected drop of blood or feces on your skin and you can catch it. Anyone have any experience with it and the VA?

[Drywall]

Our County VSO came to a Legion meeting about a year ago with some brochures put out by the VA on Hep C. According to him, if memory serves, one way to contract it was thru the use of an air gun for giving shots in basic. I had the air gun shots in '65 and can remember that if you flinched, it would cut like a razor and the blood would run. I would guess that it is service connected not only for Vietnam but for the whole time they used the air gun inoculation system. I understand that it can lie dormant in your system for 30 - 40 years without any symtoms. To really get a definitive answer you should contact your VSO or the VA.

[xgrunt]

It is not service connected and the "official" government line is that you get it fron drug use, getting tattoos, unprotected sex and oh yeah blood transfusions before 1992. There is a large underground swelling of feeling in this country that it was caused by the air gun shots or as an experimental vaccine to combat regular Hep as the the government knew that that was a major problem in Nam. I know as I've been fighting the VA for 3 years over this. Just another way to kill the Viet Nam army off. xgrunt:mad: :mad:

[Packo]

but not long ago the VA tested me for it stateing that it is something that a large percentage of Vietnam Vets were getting. The clinic inferred that it was service connectable if you served in Vietnam. I "thought" that like AO cancers it was a given but that would be the VA doing the right thing, and that's hard for me to picture. Checking in with a NSO at a VARO would probably give you the straight answer.

Packo