Even before the U.S. Navy's hospital ship, Comfort, anchored off the coast of Haiti on Wednesday, patients who were injured in last week's earthquake were airlifted onto the ship to receive care, the Miami Herald reports (Clark, 1/21). According to the Baltimore Sun, "patients were flown in by the Navy, Coast Guard or Air Force in one of the 30 helicopters available within the ship's range. Plans for a boat-based shuttle were foiled by an earthquake aftershock that flattened the pier the Comfort had expected to use and that jolted the ship as if it had hit ground. Ship officials identified an alternate boat-landing site by midafternoon" (Little, 1/21).
VOA News writes, "The Comfort's two helicopters have been coming and going at a rapid pace, with the ability to ferry up to 11 patients at a time to the hospital ship" (Presto, 1/20). The 1,000-bed vessel "is equipped to do everything a major hospital can, short of transplants and open-heart surgery," the Miami Herald writes, adding that it is "also prepared for communicable diseases, such as tuberculosis, and has a 16-bed isolation unit." Comfort has "13 surgeons and 27 physicians and counting, as well as 18 Creole translators - several of whom volunteered to come aboard as soon as they heard about the earthquake." Commander Timothy Donahue said he expects the ship "will be filled to capacity soon" (1/21).
More than 350 crew members are expected to join the ship, but their arrival has been slow and many will only arrive in the next two to three days by boat, the Baltimore Sun reports. "But even with the slowed startup, the ship's main treatment and assessment rooms seemed on the verge of being overwhelmed" (1/21).
U.S. Officials Discuss Aid Delivery; Aid Reaching People, But Health Situation Remains Precarious
U.S. officials are reacting to allegations that aid delivery after the earthquake has been slow, CNN reports. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said, "Realistically, I am aware of the difficulties that this terrible natural disaster has posed." She added that "she was impressed by how much had gotten done, considering 'so many challenges that had to be addressed all at once.'" Lt. Gen. Keen, who is overseeing U.S. military operations in Haiti, "said any aircraft identified as carrying medical supplies have priority for landing. They are turned away only 'if there's no parking space on the ramp, and they don't have sufficient fuel to hold in their holding pattern,' he said" (1/21). NPR interviews Cheryl Mills, the State Department's point person on Haiti, about the U.S. role in relief efforts and the upcoming donor conference in Montreal (Montagne, 1/21).
In Port-au-Prince, many earthquake survivors left for the "countryside in hopes of finding safer conditions, but there was concern whether small outlying communities would be able to handle the sudden influx," the Los Angeles Times/San Francisco Chronicle reports. But "the relief effort appeared to be making some progress" for those who stayed in the capital.
"The U.N. World Food Program said it had delivered about a million ready-to-eat meals in and around Port-au-Prince, and hoped to provide 10 million more in the next week. … The U.S. Army had two major aid distribution points up and running," the newspaper writes (Wilkinson/Mozingo/Ellingwood, 1/21). According to NPR, "The U.S. military is now the largest single-food provider in the devastated Haitian capital" (Beaubien, 1/21).
The Wall Street Journal notes that although "[a]id such as food and water began to be more widely distributed … the need for essentials such as medicines was overwhelming - and claiming lives by the day. At any given moment, thousands of injured, some grievously, wait outside virtually any hospital or clinic, pleading for treatment." The article examines the deaths that are occurring after the earthquake. "The lack of medicines is only one of many factors that could raise the death toll in coming days and weeks, including fatalities from disease, contaminated water, downed electricity lines, and hazardous debris," the newspaper writes (Dugan/Dade, 1/21).