Medical relief winds down in Haiti
1 February 2010, 01:31
By Mica Rosenberg and Tom Brown
Port-au-Prince - Foreign doctors treating the injured from Haiti's catastrophic earthquake fear more could die as emergency medical relief winds down, but food distribution was smoother on Sunday using a coupon system.
The medical care worries have increased after the United States military on Wednesday stopped flying critical quake patients to US hospitals for treatment, in a confused dispute over where they should be hospitalised and who should pay the costs.
Nearly three weeks after the magnitude 7.0 earthquake killed up to 200 000 Haitians and left up to a million more homeless, a huge US-led international relief operation has been struggling to help injured and hungry survivors.
US officials said on Saturday no solution had yet been found in order to renew the US-run medical evacuations.
Hundreds of patients have already been evacuated to the United States for treatment, most to Florida hospitals. But Florida's governor has asked the federal government to share the burden and White House officials say they are working on solutions, including expanding medical capacity in Haiti.
Suspension of the US military medevac flights has increased pressure on emergency medical teams in Haiti who are working around the clock to treat seriously injured quake survivors, either in damaged local hospitals or in fully equipped emergency clinics that have been flown in.
"Obviously it's going to have an impact because the need is so great and we don't have the capacity on the ground to treat the neediest patients," Aurelie Ponthien, field coordinator of an emergency hospital run by the Paris-based medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said.
Foreign medics are worried about what will happen to their Haitian patients, many with amputated limbs, after overseas doctors leave the country at the end of emergency rotations.
With Haiti's previously fragile health system in ruins after the quake, they see weak and recovering victims going back to the hundreds of crowded and dirty survivors' camps that carpet the devastated capital, where the risks of infection and of illnesses like tuberculosis and AIDS are high.
"People will fall through the cracks and there will be a lot more deaths," said Richard Wenzel, an infectious disease expert working in Port-au-Prince.
Local doctors and medical staff were among quake victims, including more than 100 nursing students buried under the rubble of a five-story nursing school that collapsed in the January 12 quake. - Reuters
Port-au-Prince - Foreign doctors treating the injured from Haiti's catastrophic earthquake fear more could die as emergency medical relief winds down, but food distribution was smoother on Sunday using a coupon system.
The medical care worries have increased after the United States military on Wednesday stopped flying critical quake patients to US hospitals for treatment, in a confused dispute over where they should be hospitalised and who should pay the costs.
Nearly three weeks after the magnitude 7.0 earthquake killed up to 200 000 Haitians and left up to a million more homeless, a huge US-led international relief operation has been struggling to help injured and hungry survivors.
US officials said on Saturday no solution had yet been found in order to renew the US-run medical evacuations.
Hundreds of patients have already been evacuated to the United States for treatment, most to Florida hospitals. But Florida's governor has asked the federal government to share the burden and White House officials say they are working on solutions, including expanding medical capacity in Haiti.
Suspension of the US military medevac flights has increased pressure on emergency medical teams in Haiti who are working around the clock to treat seriously injured quake survivors, either in damaged local hospitals or in fully equipped emergency clinics that have been flown in.
"Obviously it's going to have an impact because the need is so great and we don't have the capacity on the ground to treat the neediest patients," Aurelie Ponthien, field coordinator of an emergency hospital run by the Paris-based medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said.
Foreign medics are worried about what will happen to their Haitian patients, many with amputated limbs, after overseas doctors leave the country at the end of emergency rotations.
With Haiti's previously fragile health system in ruins after the quake, they see weak and recovering victims going back to the hundreds of crowded and dirty survivors' camps that carpet the devastated capital, where the risks of infection and of illnesses like tuberculosis and AIDS are high.
"People will fall through the cracks and there will be a lot more deaths," said Richard Wenzel, an infectious disease expert working in Port-au-Prince.
Local doctors and medical staff were among quake victims, including more than 100 nursing students buried under the rubble of a five-story nursing school that collapsed in the January 12 quake. - Reuters
Cape Town
