Test Years
1940’s – 1960’s
Christmas Island
Australian veterans exposed to British atomic bomb tests win free healthcare.
May 9 2017
Australian ex-servicemen who were exposed to radiation during British atomic bomb tests in Australia and during the clean-up of Japan after the Second World War have won a decades-old campaign for free medical treatment. The Australian government announced on Tuesday it has allocated 133 million Australian dollars (£75 million) in the budget for the next fiscal year to provide these former troops with veterans’ gold cards. The cards entitle certain veterans to an extensive range of free healthcare at the government’s expense.
Thousands of Australian servicemen were sent to Hiroshima after the nuclear blast as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force and to British nuclear test sites in the Maralinga region of the Australian Outback and the Montebello islands off the north-west coast from the 1940s to the 1960s. Outback Aborigines and farmers affected by fallout in the arid and sparsely populated Maralinga region will also be eligible for free medical help, officials said. Frank Walker, author of a history of the British tests called Maralinga, said the gold cards for a dwindling number of survivors were too little, too late.
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Atomic Veterans Legacy
We were born in the birth of the Atomic Age, many with known and assumed genetic damage, others with just suspected medical repercussions, but most governments didn’t have tracking mechanisms in place.
Many Atomic GMO’s are only now learning they are facing medical and genetic fallout from their parents, or grand-parents exposure to these now-known carcinogens. The range of conditions and organs effected is growing in understanding, from blood disorders, reproductive challenges, birth defects, a variety of emerging data is revealing new information.
The need to stay informed is critical for ourselves and generations to come. As an identifiable group and we should harness this to help researchers study and inform us.
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Locations of Nuclear Weapons Test Sites
The Cold War cast a lingering shadow over generations of Atomic Veteran’s families.
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