Whistleblower Finds Cockroaches Scurrying Around At Phoenix VA
Jonah Bennett
National Security/Politics Reporter
A patient whistleblower from the Phoenix, Ariz., Veteran Affairs (VA) medical center has captured footage of cockroaches scurrying around the pharmacy room at the medical center.
The whistleblower, who elected to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation, took video footage of several cockroaches at the Phoenix VA medical center’s pharmacy, Fox 10 Phoenix reports.
Patients tried to stomp on one of the cockroaches on the pharmacy floor. Another video shows a roach crawling on a doorway.
“I know they’ve had infestation problems for years,” Brandon Coleman, a whistleblower and Phoenix employee, told Fox 10 Phoenix in an interview.
“They’re used to it,” said Coleman of the veterans at the facility. “They’re used to substandard care. I think veterans feel lucky just to get an appointment with the secret wait list going on in Phoenix. A roach is no big deal.”
A hospital spokesman from Phoenix told the local news outlet that a recent inspection of the pharmacy did not turn up any cockroaches.
“Whenever insects are reported, our environmental management specialists provide immediate action and ensure the external pest control agencies are notified to come on site for complete remediation activities,” the spokesman said.
The problem of cockroaches is not isolated to Phoenix, but has also presented itself at the Hines VA facility in Chicago, where the VA inspector general determined in 2016 that cockroaches had infested the kitchen and were crawling on the food trays and food carts. According to investigators, hospital leadership knew of the problem and did nothing, an issue Coleman suggested may similarly be at play at Phoenix.
“During our unannounced site visit on May 10, 2016, we found dead cockroaches on glue traps dispersed throughout the facility’s main kitchen,” the inspector general report observed. “We observed conditions favorable to pest infestation.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/23/whistleblower-finds-cockroaches-scurrying-around-at-phoenix-va/
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