Security concerns cause doctors to leave hospital, quake victims

[Haole Girl]

Source: CNN

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- Earthquake victims, writhing in pain and grasping at life, watched doctors and nurses walk away from a field hospital Friday night after United Nations officials ordered a medical team to evacuate the area out of security concerns, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta reported.

U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said Saturday that the world body's mission in Haiti did not order any medical team to leave the Port-au-Prince field hospital. If the team left, it was at the request of their own organizations, he told CNN.

Gupta assessed the needs of the 25 patients, but there was little he could do without supplies. And more people, some in critical condition, were trickling in.

Gupta monitored patients' vital signs, administered painkillers and continued intravenous drips. He stabilized three new patients in critical condition.






Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/16/haiti.abandoned.patients/index.html?hpt=T2

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This is so heartbreaking. I hope the situation stabilizes, somehow, and soon.

[gateley]

1. How difficult that must be for the medical team -- to walk away from the

injured and dying.

I, too, hope the situation stabilizes soon.

[DJ13]

2. Supposedly the UN now claims they gave no orders

Saw that on the CNN scroll this morning.

[Haole Girl]

3. Well, a picture tells a thousand words

Did you watch the vid?

[Ocracoker16]

4. pictures show vehicles clearly marked UN

sort of damning evidence

[EFerrari]

6. The UN was decapitated -- they lost their two top people in the quake.

[CreekDog]

8. How about giving them the benefit of the doubt here

at least for a moment.

i don't see you in Haiti attending to the sick.

and i don't think the medical people are there hoping to not do anything.

sometimes this kind of crap is where i want to tell people to grow up. :rant:

[Garbo 2004]

5. Now Belgian med team chief says UN did not order them to leave, he ordered the evacuation.

UN provided transporation to evacuate the medical team and supplies.

CNN initially reported, based on conversations with some of the doctors, that the United Nations ordered the Belgian First Aid and Support Team to evacuate. However, Belgian Chief Coordinator Geert Gijs, a doctor who was at the hospital with 60 Belgian medical personnel, said it was his decision to pull the team out for the night. Gijs said he requested U.N. security personnel to staff the hospital overnight, but was told that peacekeepers would only be able to evacuate the team.

He said it was a "tough decision" but that he accepted the U.N. offer to evacuate after a Canadian medical team, also at the hospital with Canadian security officers, left the site Friday afternoon. The Belgian team returned Saturday morning.

Gijs said the United Nations has agreed to provide security for Saturday night. The team has requested the Belgian government to send its own troops for the field hospital, which Gijs expects to arrive late Sunday. http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/16/haiti.abandoned.patients/index.html?hpt=T1

[DesertDiamond]

7. Earthquake concerns? They were in tents.

[CreekDog]

9. security concerns

there is more than earthquakes to consider and people giving assistance need their health and safety looked out for as well, don't they?

[Haole Girl]

10. *UPDATE*

Proving, yet again, not to believe everything one reads:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/16/haiti.abandoned.patients/index.html?hpt=P1