Five days after Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast, help finally arrived for two of the city's most devastated hospitals.
Rescuers were able to evacuate everyone from both Charity and University hospitals late Friday, the Associated Press reported Saturday morning.
"The last information I have is that all of the buildings are empty," Don Smithburg, head of the Louisiana State University hospital system, told the wire service.
Roughly 2,200 people were evacuated, including 363 patients; three terminally ill patients died during the rescue effort. Smithburg told the AP he did not know how many died while waiting for help. With food and water running out, some hospital employees had given each other intravenous fluids to stay alive.
"Some of them are on the brink of being unable to cope any longer. We just can't get our people out fast enough," Smithburg said.
Elsewhere in the city, the Ochsner Clinic Foundation seemed almost an oasis of calm, despite having been without power for much of the past five days, and still without plumbing.
The facility was built on high ground, above sea level, Dr. Steven Deitelzweig, the chairman of hospital medicine, said.
Deitelzweig has not left the building since Sunday, he added in a late-night phone interview Friday.
His staff (about 40 percent of whom are on duty) are seeing the gamut of problems, he said. People with chronic ailments such as diabetes, heart failure and pulmonary disease who have run out of medicine have arrived in comas, or with their problems otherwise exacerbated. The team is also treating a good many cuts, some from people who were in a hurry to rebuild their homes. The lack of drinking water in the city has resulted in dehydration and resulting renal insufficiency, as well as infectious diarrhea.
A lack of water also affects the pathology and dialysis machines, among others, which need water to function, Deitelzweig added.
But because the power came back on, there is air conditioning, so conditions are "comfortable," he said. However, doctors and other staff have been advised that the number of patients will likely rise dramatically in the next 10 days, he noted.
And Deitelzweig said he doesn't know when he will see the outside world again: National guardsman will not allow anyone out the front doors.
Despite the fact that hospitals throughout the city had at least been stabilized, and even with the arrival of military convoys carrying food and water to thousands of desperate people in the New Orleans Convention Center following President Bush's visit to the area Friday, lingering health problems remain.
The situation in New Orleans "is rapidly deteriorating," Ivor L. van Heerden, director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, said late Thursday.
People who are still in the city don't have enough water and food and are becoming dispirited, van Heerden added. And the tens of thousands who have been evacuated, and left homeless, face a similar plight, he said.
"Right now, there are over 400,000 refugees in Baton Rouge. Most of them have very few resources, they don't have water, they don't have gasoline and their credit cards won't work," he said.
There also appears to be a large number of missing people, he added. There are more than 300,000 people who didn't leave the city, van Heerden said. Echoing what the mayor of New Orleans and Louisiana's governor have predicted, he said, "The final death toll will be substantial; it will be in the thousands."
Van Heerden predicts the contamination in New Orleans is only getting worse: "There are thousands of dead bodies, a lot of dead wildlife, and a lot of contamination coming from chemical facilities, railcars and gas stations."
"There are parts of New Orleans where it's going to be months and months and months before people can go back," van Heerden said. "There is going to be problems of contaminated buildings, and problems with toxic molds developing in the wall spaces."
Van Heerden also believes that because people have been exposed to mosquitoes for several days, and the mosquitoes are breeding, the risk of West Nile is going to rise dramatically. So far this year in Louisiana, there have been 52 reported cases of West Nile and four deaths, according to the latest count by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
One expert thinks that a variety of health dangers are a significant problem for refugees along the 90 miles of Gulf Coast that took the brunt of Monday's storm.
The first problem is access to clean, potable water, said Dr. Eric A. Weiss, an emergency medicine expert at Stanford University School of Medicine. He also noted that "people, particularly elderly people, have been displaced from their normal medical care. They need access to their medications and to physicians."
Weiss isn't concerned that there will be outbreaks of cholera or other similar diseases. "We don't have cholera here in the United States," he said. "I would expect to see outbreaks similar to what you see on cruise ships -- think of the Superdome as a large cruise ship."
Weiss downplayed concerns about diseases from the vast number of corpses floating in the water. "The danger is highly overrated," he said. "There is not a significant danger of disease from floating bodies."
Another expert sees the raw sewage mixing in the floodwater as a potential threat to public health. This is particularly true for people who are exposed to the water, and who have open wounds or who can't wash their hands.
"While there are a lot of chemicals in the water, they probably don't rise to the level of an acute toxin," said John Pardue, director of the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute at Louisiana State University. "Probably the biggest danger right now is the sewage."
Pardue plans to start sampling the water in New Orleans to determine its chemical and biological elements that could cause public health problems.
As far as the sewer system is concerned, Pardue said there were lots of leaks in the sewer system before the hurricane. The whole system was being rebuilt at the time of the storm, he noted.
And for everyone caught up in what has become one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, mental health is a big concern.
"The days and weeks of a hurricane like this are very rough," Weiss said. "There are tremendous psychosocial ramifications. There is a high likelihood of seeing sleep disorders, anxiety, depression and other post-traumatic, stress-related illnesses."
Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt announced Friday that the first 10 federal medical shelters will be located at military facilities throughout the Gulf region to provide basic health-care services for hurricane victims. He added that almost 100 tons in vital medications and supplies have been shipped since last weekend, and are being distributed.
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