In The Ruins, Angels Of Mercy
Without the barest necessities, doctors and nurses struggle to keep hurricane victims alive
The federal Department of Health and Human Services is now setting up 10 mobile medical shelters on military bases including Fort Polk in west central Louisiana, 200 miles away from the affected areas, and Eglin Air Force Base in Pensacola, Fla., 150 miles from New Orleans. They plan to treat people for dehydration, heat stroke, and other pressing needs. "The purpose of these shelters is to provide basic medical services only," says HHS spokesman Bill Hall. "We have identified hospitals with available beds all over the nation where seriously ill patients can be transferred." The department is also working with pharmaceutical companies and state health departments to figure out how to get donations of prescription drugs to hurricane refugees. "The details are being worked on now," Hall says.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has sent more than 30 workers to the hurricane region to assess the situation and deliver basics such as tetanus shots; 8,000 doses of tetanus vaccine were dispatched to Mississippi. The CDC is also organizing two dozen 20-member teams that include experts in infectious disease and environmental health who are expected to be of more use in the weeks to come, as cleanup operations begin. "We're in a marathon, not a sprint," CDC Director Julie Gerberding said last week.
Future ills. Indeed, doctors and nurses in Louisiana and Mississippi have been so busy trying to keep people alive that they've scarcely acknowledged the medical problems more typical after a hurricane--hepatitis A, diarrhea, and other intestinal problems caused by drinking polluted water or eating spoiled food; infected cuts and scrapes; and chainsaw injuries from cleanup efforts. Those problems, along with animal bites from snakes, rats, dogs, and other displaced critters, as well as mosquito-borne diseases such as West Nile virus, usually demand more healthcare than the initial injuries caused by a hurricane. But with hundreds of thousands of residents evacuated and unable to return home anytime soon, that may not prove true for Katrina's victims.
Public-health officials also worry about the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the hurricane who will need basic healthcare--doctors' visits, new prescriptions, dental care--and won't have anywhere to turn. "There's a whole range of people who have put off healthcare," says Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. "You create a health debt that has to be caught up."
And in the weeks to come, people who are just grateful to have survived will find themselves struggling to patch together a new life for themselves and their families after losing their homes, jobs, schools, and churches. "The ultimate impact will be on mental health," says the CDC's Gerberding. That's why the CDC plans to provide mental health experts "at every single location" with refugees, she says. "The long-term consequences of this on the individual are just overwhelming."
With Helen Fields, Josh Fischman, Betsy Querna and Amanda Spake
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