2008 Woodie Awards
Chaos among medical help
Marilynn Marchione
Associated Press
Issue date: 9/8/05 Section: Lifestyles and Health
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BATON ROUGE, La. Volunteer physicians are pouring in to care for the sick, but red tape is keeping hundreds of others from caring for Hurricane Katrina survivors, as health officials worry about potential outbreaks.
Among the doctors stymied from helping are 100 surgeons and paramedics in a state-of-the-art mobile hospital marooned in rural Mississippi.
"We have tried so hard to do the right thing. It took us 30 hours to get here,'' said one of the frustrated surgeons, Dr. Preston ``Chip'' Rich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In a phone interview Preston stated that it "is just mind-boggling" that government officials can't straighten out this mess and get evacuees assigned to a relief effort now that they are just a few miles away.
While the North Carolina doctors waited Sunday, the first predictable signs of disease from contaminated water emerged on Saturday: a Mississippi shelter was closed after 20 residents got sick with dysentery, probably from drinking contaminated water.
However, the country's leading health official Dr. Julie Gerberding, told The Associated Press in an interview at a triage center Sunday that her biggest concerns are tetanus and childhood diseases.
"Tetanus is something we'd be especially concerned about,'' said Gerberding, head of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Tetanus lives in soil and can enter the body easily through a scratch, and many flood survivors have endured filthy conditions.
Gerberding also urged health care workers in the growing multitude of shelters to try to find out a child's shot history and, ``If you can't establish that a child has been vaccinated, then vaccinate. We can't take chances.''
Diseases such as measles and whooping cough could rapidly spread in the cramped quarters, thousands of flood victims are now sharing.
So far, there have been relatively few cases of diarrhea and infections, Gerberding said, but ``we're early in the process.''
Among the doctors stymied from helping are 100 surgeons and paramedics in a state-of-the-art mobile hospital marooned in rural Mississippi.
"We have tried so hard to do the right thing. It took us 30 hours to get here,'' said one of the frustrated surgeons, Dr. Preston ``Chip'' Rich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In a phone interview Preston stated that it "is just mind-boggling" that government officials can't straighten out this mess and get evacuees assigned to a relief effort now that they are just a few miles away.
While the North Carolina doctors waited Sunday, the first predictable signs of disease from contaminated water emerged on Saturday: a Mississippi shelter was closed after 20 residents got sick with dysentery, probably from drinking contaminated water.
However, the country's leading health official Dr. Julie Gerberding, told The Associated Press in an interview at a triage center Sunday that her biggest concerns are tetanus and childhood diseases.
"Tetanus is something we'd be especially concerned about,'' said Gerberding, head of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Tetanus lives in soil and can enter the body easily through a scratch, and many flood survivors have endured filthy conditions.
Gerberding also urged health care workers in the growing multitude of shelters to try to find out a child's shot history and, ``If you can't establish that a child has been vaccinated, then vaccinate. We can't take chances.''
Diseases such as measles and whooping cough could rapidly spread in the cramped quarters, thousands of flood victims are now sharing.
So far, there have been relatively few cases of diarrhea and infections, Gerberding said, but ``we're early in the process.''
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