Re: I don't think you fully understand why Schroeder's support and words are so important to the American psyche at the present time.........Americans are not feeling the love. Schroeder's words help to reduce that feeling of being alone and isolated while facing one of the worst disasters in American history. We are having a crisis of the soul and when you are in that place, kind words are always appreciated no matter their motivation.
OH! But of course... you swell my eyes with tears! Huh, btw, when are the Cuban doctors scheduled to land in Louisiana? Have Americans felt Castro's love yet? Anyway, I wish those Cuban medics will be luckier hacking their way to New Orleans than Dr. Preston "Chip" Rich's team --clue:
Katrina medical help held up by red tape
Doctors waiting to treat victims in tax-funded, state-of-the-art unit
Sunday, September 4, 2005 Posted: 2136 GMT (0536 HKT)
BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (AP) -- Volunteer physicians are pouring in to care for the sick, but red tape is keeping hundreds of others from caring for Hurricane Katrina survivors while health problems rise.
Among the doctors stymied from helping out are 100 surgeons and paramedics in a state-of-the-art mobile hospital, developed with millions of tax dollars for just such emergencies, marooned in rural Mississippi.
"The bell was rung, the e-mails were sent off. ...We all got off work and deployed," said one of the frustrated surgeons, Dr. Preston "Chip" Rich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"We have tried so hard to do the right thing. It took us 30 hours to get here," he said. That government officials can't straighten out the mess and get them assigned to a relief effort now that they're just a few miles away "is just mind-boggling," he said.
While the doctors wait, the first signs of disease began to emerge Saturday: A Mississippi shelter was closed after 20 residents got sick with dysentery, probably from drinking contaminated water.
Many other storm survivors were being treated in the Houston Astrodome and other shelters for an assortment of problems, including chronic health conditions left untreated because people had lost or used up their medicine.
The North Carolina mobile hospital stranded in Mississippi was developed through the Office of Homeland Security after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. With capacity for 113 beds, it is designed to handle disasters and mass casualties.
Equipment includes ultrasound, digital radiology, satellite Internet, and a full pharmacy, enabling doctors to do most types of surgery in the field, including open-chest and abdominal operations.
It travels in a convoy that includes two 53-foot trailers, which as of Sunday afternoon was parked on a gravel lot 70 miles north of New Orleans because Louisiana officials for several days would not let them deploy to the flooded city, Rich said.
Yet plans to use the facility and its 100 health professionals were hatched days before Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, doctors in the caravan said.
As they talked with Mississippi officials about prospects of helping out there, other doctors complained that their offers of help also were turned away.
A primary care physician from Ohio called and e-mailed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after seeing a notice on the American Medical Association's Web site about volunteer doctors being needed.
An e-mail reply told him to watch CNN that night, where U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt was to announce a Web address for doctors to enter their names in a database.
"How crazy is that?" he complained in an e-mail to his daughter.
Dr. Jeffrey Guy, a trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt University who has been in contact with the mobile hospital doctors, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, "There are entire hospitals that are contacting me, saying, 'We need to take on patients," ' but they can't get through the bureaucracy.
"The crime of this story is, you've got millions of dollars in assets and it's not deployed," he said. "We mount a better response in a Third World country."
[...]
edition.cnn.com
Fidel Castro Offers to Send 1,100 Cuban Doctors to Help With US Hurricane Relief Efforts
By Anita Snow Associated Press Writer
Published: Sep 2, 2005
HAVANA (AP) - President Fidel Castro announced in a live television broadcast Friday that he had just issued a second offer to the United States to send 1,100 Cuban doctors to help care for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
"These personnel have international experience and the language skills necessary to attend to patients," Castro said on state television. He said the first 100 doctors have been equipped with backpacks filled with medicine and first aid supplies and are ready to travel as soon as Friday night to Texas, where many of the hurricane victims have been evacuated.
"We are offering life, to save 10, 100, 1,000," said Castro.
The Cuban leader said his government was hoping for a rapid response, "hopefully immediately so as not to lose another minute."
Castro said a diplomatic note containing the offer was sent late Friday afternoon to the U.S. Interests Section, the American mission here, and was the second such offer of its kind made this week.
Castro said the first offer of Cuban doctors for hurricane relief efforts was made during a meeting with Cuban foreign ministry and U.S. officials in Havana on Tuesday, days before the extent of the hurricane's catastrophic damage was known.
At the time, American officials had asked Cuban authorities not to publicize their offer of aid, said Castro.
"(American) authorities are going through a difficult time, we are not asking for anything," said Castro, whose country has not had diplomatic relations with the United States in more than four decades. "We're not criticizing anyone."
But Castro indicated the deepening of the human suffering in New Orleans and other U.S. Gulf Coast cities had compelled him to repeat the offer.
[...]
ap.tbo.com |
