Here in South Dakota, we have about 75,000 veterans living among us, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are creating more of them each year.

The faces of those returning veterans are young, they are increasingly likely to be female and many of them are at risk of post traumatic stress disorder, since more than 75 percent of our military's fighting force is now combat experienced.

The Veterans Administration has established screening and treatment programs for soldiers returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. One clear trend from that screening is that the prevalence of PTSD in women veterans is rising rapidly.

It has grown from afflicting just1 percent of women veterans at the start of OIF/OEF, to 19 percent in recent VA studies.

More women are answering the call to serve. Since September of 2001, more than 177,000 women have served in the military and nearly 27,000 women are currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, more will need medical and psychiatric care as wounded or disabled veterans upon their return from a war zone.

The Women Veterans Health Care Improvement Act, introduced last week in Congress by Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, who sits on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, seeks to ensure that the VA has the authority and the ability to meet the unique challenges and gender differences when treating women veterans.

The legislation requires the VA to study the health, the medical needs and the barriers to treatment faced by women OIF/OEF veterans. Since women have different health care needs than men, it makes sense that their treatments for PTSD, substance abuse, sexual trauma and mental illnesses would also differ from that given to men. Women veterans require pregnancy care, of course, but they also have different heart health issues and different orthopedic needs from men.

Herseth's bill would also require the VA to establish small pilot programs on child care assistance and counseling for women veterans.

The theme for this year's Women's Veterans Conference, held this past weekend in Rapid City, was "Celebrating Women Veterans: Wisdom from the Past, Mentoring for the Future."

We think a pro-active approach to the health care needs of women veterans is wise and should be welcomed by both the VA and the rest of America.