Medical Facilities on Hand to Aid Port-au-Prince
It has been reported that aboard the USS Carl Vinson the medical facilities on hand to aid the casualties caused by last weeks Earthquake in Port-au-Prince remained essentially unused since arriving off the coast of the area last Friday.
The vessel harbouring seven earthquake victims, including a new born is prepared with an operating room filled with oxygen tanks, ventilators and a roaster of blood donors.
Although the aircraft carrier’s medical facilities perhaps exceeds those of any other triage centre nearby it is in no way being used to its capacity. One of the reasons reported for this is that the ship does not have the authority to pick up the wounded.
It has to wait for the Air Force to call and request a medevac. But is this really necessary during these crucial hours and days many are asking?
“At this point, I have no criteria for anything. I don’t care who it is or what it is, we’ll take it,” said Commander Alfred Shwayhat, the ship’s senior medical officer, earlier Saturday. Shwayhat, an endocrinologist, internist’s and aerospace anaesthesiologist, said he is equipped to handle virtually any malady.
He has a plan for filling the ship’s enormous hanger bay loaded with enough metal beds with as many as 1,000 Haitians.
But his mission, as part of the recently dubbed Operation Unified Response, is to treat anyone sent to him by military commanders in Port-au-Prince, and so far that hasn’t amounted to many people.
“Our policy is to treat first, ask questions later, but it’s up to those on the ground,” said the ship’s public affairs officer, Commander James Krone.
“Treatment of patients with basic injuries is best done on shore,” Krone added. “If we didn’t have (the space) available, those seven patients would be who knows where.”
The vessel boasts 52 doctors, nurses, technicians and staff. In addition to Shwayhat, there is a critical care nurse; a general surgeon; a family practitioner; a radiologist; lab technicians; a pharmacy stocked with anti-malaria medication; and an independent corps man deployed with the fleet marine force to diagnose injuries on the ground.
The hospital’s present mission, as Shwayhat understands it, is limited to treating the approximately 3,500 military personnel on board and any American civilian injured in Tuesday’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake.
It is expected that Two U.S. vessels are expected to reach Haiti within the week and will be equipped to receive injured Haitians. The USNS Comfort, a hospital ship with the capacity for 1,000 patients and one of the largest trauma facilities in the U.S., was deployed Saturday and expected to arrive into Haiti by Jan. 21.
The Comfort, which responded to Hurricane Katrina and performs humanitarian missions around the world, has 19 operation rooms and a medical team of 550 Navy doctors, nurses, technicians and support staff, comprised of Navy medical personnel stationed at National Navy Medical Centre Bethesda and Naval Hospital Portsmouth.
