http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/514071?src=mp
Flood-Damaged New Orleans Hospitals to Be Closed
WASHINGTON (Reuters) Oct 05 - Charity Hospital in New Orleans, which captured the sympathy of the nation as it struggled to evacuate patients from the chaos and destruction brought by Hurricane Katrina last month, cannot be saved and will be closed, officials said on Wednesday.
The Louisiana State University Health Care Services Division said the Charity and University Hospitals were too heavily damaged and were unsalvageable.
"The... Charity and University Hospital buildings were issued their 'death warrant' by Katrina and the cataclysmic floods it spawned," said Donald Smithburg, chief executive officer of LSU's Health Care Services Division.
"Even before the storms, these old facilities were on the ropes," he added in a statement.
Charity Hospital was built in the 1930s and University Hospital in the 1960s.
As levees failed and New Orleans filled with floodwaters after the hurricane, doctors at Charity called television networks and newspapers on their cellphones, begging for help.
They described watching in disbelief as staff and patients at neighboring hospitals were evacuated while they waited amid growing desperation and danger.
Staffers eventually were forced to beg rides on boats and in military vehicles to get their dying patients to a nearby helicopter pad for evacuation. Some would-be rescuers were frightened off by reports of gunfire, which in many cases turned out to be false.
Smithburg estimated that damage to Charity Hospital totaled more than $340 million and $105 million at University Hospital.
Only three hospitals are now operating in New Orleans -- East Jefferson, West Jefferson and the Ochsner Clinic. All are not-for-profit hospitals in the immediate suburbs.
Charity was the only free hospital in New Orleans and doctors have expressed fears that poor patients will go untreated while a replacement is built, a process that will take years.
In the meantime, the USNS Comfort, a naval medical ship, will help. The ship, which is already receiving patients, is docked at the Poland Street Wharf, adjacent to New Orleans' badly flooded Ninth Ward.
It is a trauma facility with 12 fully-equipped operating rooms, 1,000 beds, X-ray equipment including a CAT scanner, a medical laboratory and a pharmacy.
Smithburg said that despite an effort to clean up Charity Hospital, it could not be used again to treat patients. "Both facilities are dangerous, dangerous places," he said.
"Over the past several weeks experts have inspected both hospitals. Perhaps to the well-intended observer the facilities don't look much worse than they did pre-Katrina, but through the lenses of consulting engineers, the buildings have unsafe air to breathe, pervasive mold growing, and mechanical systems that were completely destroyed by the storm."