Haití: polémicas fotos de puertorriqueños
Redacción
BBC Mundo
En esta captura del diario El Nuevo Día, un galeno posa con una sierra junto a un herido haitiano.
La publicación de varias fotografías en las que aparecen médicos puertorriqueños posando sonrientes junto a heridos y muertos en el terremoto de Haití indignó al gobierno de San Juan y a varias organizaciones médicas del país.
En las imágenes, que aparecieron colgadas en un grupo de la red social Facebook llamado "Salvemos Haití (Senado de Puerto Rico)", se puede ver a miembros de una delegación médica enviada a la ciudad fronteriza de Jamaní, en República Dominicana, por el Senado puertorriqueño.
Varios medios mostraron fotografías en las que médicos puertorriqueños aparecen con armas de fuego, bebidas alcohólicas y preservativos, y otras en las que se retratan junto a un ataúd o con una sierra en la mano mientras atienden a un paciente.
Medios locales incluso hicieron comparaciones con las fotografías de soldados estadounidenses posando junto a presos humillados de la cárcel de Abu Ghraib, en Irak, durante la guerra en este país del golfo Pérsico.
"Nunca quise lastimar o hacer daño con esa foto", dijo uno de los médicos, Vincent Bonilla, al diario puertorriqueño El Nuevo Día. "Posé inocente e ignorantemente con un arma descargada. Lamentablemente, mi ingenuidad me ha llevado a tomar una acción inmadura que trae repercusiones y podría manchar la imagen de mis colegas, que son profesionales de la salud", añadió.
Según declararon varios de los implicados, las fotografías de los festejos se tomaron cuando volvían ya hacia Puerto Rico. Tuvieron una avería en su autobús y decidieron tomar unas cervezas mientras esperaban a que se arreglara el vehículo, argumentaron.
"Es patético"
El Colegio de Médicos anunció una reunión de su Comité de Ética para investigar lo sucedido. Foto: diario Primera Hora.
Mientras, el presidente del Colegio de Médicos y Cirujanos de Puerto Rico, Eduardo Ibarra, dijo que se encontraba en "shock" por las imágenes. Ibarra anunció un encuentro del Comité de Ética del colegio para iniciar una investigación de lo ocurrido.
"Es patético. Esperamos que tengan una explicación. Que digan que fue una fiesta después de trabajar 48 horas seguidas o algo así… pudiera ser entendible", dijo.
Por su parte, el presidente del Senado, la institución que coordinó el envío de esta misión, dijo que "hay fotos que no reflejan nada malo ni ilegal, pero hay otras que son sencillamente cuestionables". "Hay algunas que puede rayar en conducta antiética de los galenos", dijo Thomas Rivera Schatz.
"Puerto Rico se metió en esto para ayudar… y la imprudencia de un grupo pequeño no debe manchar la generosidad de Puerto Rico", añadió el líder de la cámara.
Por otro lado, en Haití prosiguen los esfuerzos para cobijar a los afectados por el sismo que golpeó al país hace dos semanas y media.
El gobierno planea empezar a trasladar a miles de personas desde las zonas más afectadas de Puerto Príncipe a campamentos a las afueras de la ciudad, explicó la enviada especial de la BBC Karen Allen.
Según Naciones Unidas, un millón de personas necesitan todavía refugio y serán necesarias muchas más tiendas de campaña para acomodar a todos los que se quedaron sin hogar.
Giving Life in a Land Overflowing With Pain
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Doctors introduced Roseline Antoine to her newborn, Kimberly, on Thursday in a tent serving as a maternity ward outside General Hospital in Port-au-Prince. More Photos >
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By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: January 29, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Biology and the earthquake dictated that Roseline Antoine would give birth at 9:42 a.m. Thursday to a healthy baby girl who has no home but the street. The same irrevocable forces left Delva Venite naked a few feet away, in pain, waiting nearly a day for doctors to deal with the stillborn son inside her.
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Giving Birth in Haiti
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Haitian Lawmakers Seek to Delay Elections (January 30, 2010)
For Haitians in the U.S. Illegally, Some Help (January 30, 2010)
Cost Dispute Halts Airlift of Injured Haiti Quake Victims (January 30, 2010)
The women shared one of the better medical facilities here — a maternity tent outside General Hospital — but there were not enough beds or doctors. Flies were their roommates, bunching like crows on the intravenous drips, and as for the joy found in most maternity wards, that had been lost to the cracked earth.
"The street where I live, it's so dirty; there isn't enough food or water," Ms. Antoine said. "I'm scared to bring a baby into this awful situation."
Pulling down her blue dress after giving birth, she added, "I need to find a way to survive."
The pregnant are an especially vulnerable subset of victims of the quake that has left so many Haitians homeless and desolate. The United Nations estimates that 15 percent of the 63,000 pregnant women in the earthquake-affected areas are likely to have potentially life-threatening complications. For the roughly 7,000 who will give birth in the next month, the risks are even greater.
Aid groups are doing what they can. CARE has been handing out hygienic birthing kits, and doctors from around the world have taken a special pride in delivering babies. Along with rescues, newborns have become beacons of uplift amid the darkness of death.
Still, Haiti is a frightening nursery. Even before the quake, this small country had the highest rates of infant, of under-5 and of maternal mortality in the Western Hemisphere; on average, according to United Nations reports, 670 Haitian women out of every 100,000 die in childbirth, compared with 11 in the United States.
The troubles are especially visible in the tent cities all over the capital. Earlier this week on the grounds of a former military airfield, Venold Joseph, 29, devoured a tin of spaghetti, her first meal since having her baby there four days earlier.
In another tent camp, on a soccer field of a school near the downtown, one meal a day was as much as Mirline Civil, 17, could hope for. Her baby, born Sunday, struggled, too. When she tried to breast-feed the little boy, named Maiderson, he failed to latch. She rocked him back and forth and asked, "Why are you crying so much?"
In three days of visits to General Hospital, which is operating mostly out of tents, mothers were desperate to avoid returning to their own patch of dirt.
The recovery tent, a short walk from the birthing tent, included 15 mattresses Thursday, on gravel, each with a mother and child.
Sandia Sulea, 24, leaning on her elbow, and Nativita Thomas, also 24, said they both had their babies three days earlier. Their homes were flattened. They were left to sleep in the street.
The medical tent, though hotter than 100 degrees in the afternoon sun, was a step up. Here, nurses bring crackers and juice. Here, if something goes wrong, a medical team will help.
"I know they need space for other people," Ms. Sulea said. "But I don't know what to do."
Across the tent, an older woman nodded toward a quiet young mother in a men's navy blue golf shirt, picking at her nails. While the other women had family or friends crowded around, she sat with her infant son, Mackendi.
"I'm from an orphanage," said the new mother, Aristil Fabian, 18. "My mother and father are dead."
Without family — her husband fled to the country — she said she had been roaming the street, bedding down in the closest camp when it was time to sleep. She made it to the hospital on Wednesday, when she had the baby, but by Thursday afternoon, she had no idea what was next.
"I don't have anyone," she said. "I'm alone."
Inside two pediatric tents a few yards away, steel cribs with chipping paint sat crammed together. There were babies with broken arms, a boy with four amputated toes, and two abandoned children — one cross-eyed, the other, doctors believe, with cerebral palsy. No one seemed to know whether the parents died in the earthquake or just gave them up.
The most severe case, however, lay in another crib: the boy with no name. He was 13 months old, according to a man who was waving away flies, but he was so severely malnourished, his eye sockets looked like the cardboard tubes that hold toilet paper. His arms were thin enough to reveal separate bones and ligaments.
"We're trying to do what we can," said Dr. Carole Dubuché, a Haitian-American pediatrician who practices in Brooklyn, as she filled a bottle of formula.
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Doctors introduced Roseline Antoine to her newborn, Kimberly, on Thursday in a tent serving as a maternity ward outside General Hospital in Port-au-Prince. More Photos >
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By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: January 29, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Biology and the earthquake dictated that Roseline Antoine would give birth at 9:42 a.m. Thursday to a healthy baby girl who has no home but the street. The same irrevocable forces left Delva Venite naked a few feet away, in pain, waiting nearly a day for doctors to deal with the stillborn son inside her.
Multimedia
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Views From Haiti
Slide Show
Giving Birth in Haiti
Related
Haitian Lawmakers Seek to Delay Elections (January 30, 2010)
For Haitians in the U.S. Illegally, Some Help (January 30, 2010)
Cost Dispute Halts Airlift of Injured Haiti Quake Victims (January 30, 2010)
The women shared one of the better medical facilities here — a maternity tent outside General Hospital — but there were not enough beds or doctors. Flies were their roommates, bunching like crows on the intravenous drips, and as for the joy found in most maternity wards, that had been lost to the cracked earth.
"The street where I live, it's so dirty; there isn't enough food or water," Ms. Antoine said. "I'm scared to bring a baby into this awful situation."
Pulling down her blue dress after giving birth, she added, "I need to find a way to survive."
The pregnant are an especially vulnerable subset of victims of the quake that has left so many Haitians homeless and desolate. The United Nations estimates that 15 percent of the 63,000 pregnant women in the earthquake-affected areas are likely to have potentially life-threatening complications. For the roughly 7,000 who will give birth in the next month, the risks are even greater.
Aid groups are doing what they can. CARE has been handing out hygienic birthing kits, and doctors from around the world have taken a special pride in delivering babies. Along with rescues, newborns have become beacons of uplift amid the darkness of death.
Still, Haiti is a frightening nursery. Even before the quake, this small country had the highest rates of infant, of under-5 and of maternal mortality in the Western Hemisphere; on average, according to United Nations reports, 670 Haitian women out of every 100,000 die in childbirth, compared with 11 in the United States.
The troubles are especially visible in the tent cities all over the capital. Earlier this week on the grounds of a former military airfield, Venold Joseph, 29, devoured a tin of spaghetti, her first meal since having her baby there four days earlier.
In another tent camp, on a soccer field of a school near the downtown, one meal a day was as much as Mirline Civil, 17, could hope for. Her baby, born Sunday, struggled, too. When she tried to breast-feed the little boy, named Maiderson, he failed to latch. She rocked him back and forth and asked, "Why are you crying so much?"
In three days of visits to General Hospital, which is operating mostly out of tents, mothers were desperate to avoid returning to their own patch of dirt.
The recovery tent, a short walk from the birthing tent, included 15 mattresses Thursday, on gravel, each with a mother and child.
Sandia Sulea, 24, leaning on her elbow, and Nativita Thomas, also 24, said they both had their babies three days earlier. Their homes were flattened. They were left to sleep in the street.
The medical tent, though hotter than 100 degrees in the afternoon sun, was a step up. Here, nurses bring crackers and juice. Here, if something goes wrong, a medical team will help.
"I know they need space for other people," Ms. Sulea said. "But I don't know what to do."
Across the tent, an older woman nodded toward a quiet young mother in a men's navy blue golf shirt, picking at her nails. While the other women had family or friends crowded around, she sat with her infant son, Mackendi.
"I'm from an orphanage," said the new mother, Aristil Fabian, 18. "My mother and father are dead."
Without family — her husband fled to the country — she said she had been roaming the street, bedding down in the closest camp when it was time to sleep. She made it to the hospital on Wednesday, when she had the baby, but by Thursday afternoon, she had no idea what was next.
"I don't have anyone," she said. "I'm alone."
Inside two pediatric tents a few yards away, steel cribs with chipping paint sat crammed together. There were babies with broken arms, a boy with four amputated toes, and two abandoned children — one cross-eyed, the other, doctors believe, with cerebral palsy. No one seemed to know whether the parents died in the earthquake or just gave them up.
The most severe case, however, lay in another crib: the boy with no name. He was 13 months old, according to a man who was waving away flies, but he was so severely malnourished, his eye sockets looked like the cardboard tubes that hold toilet paper. His arms were thin enough to reveal separate bones and ligaments.
"We're trying to do what we can," said Dr. Carole Dubuché, a Haitian-American pediatrician who practices in Brooklyn, as she filled a bottle of formula.
Few of the doctors were local. Most of the Haitian obstetricians and pediatricians have still not returned to work full time. The young residents who are trying to fill the gap say a few show up for the morning or afternoon but do not stay long.
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Views From Haiti
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Giving Birth in Haiti
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Haitian Lawmakers Seek to Delay Elections (January 30, 2010)
For Haitians in the U.S. Illegally, Some Help (January 30, 2010)
Cost Dispute Halts Airlift of Injured Haiti Quake Victims (January 30, 2010)
Ms. Venite's husband, Gérard Joseph, said he understood why. "Everyone is looking for their family," he said.
But not everyone sees it that way. "People here are getting a paycheck and they don't come to work," said Dr. Gerard Guy Prosper, a former head of pediatrics at General Hospital who now works in the Bronx. "And no one does anything about it."
He nearly shook with anger.
The result, for now, seems to be a scramble to keep up. On Thursday, Ms. Venite's pregnancy ended nine months after it started, with a small, still figure in a cardboard box on the dirty ground. It was only chance that kept someone from accidentally kicking it.
And on Friday by 3 p.m., two women had already had Caesarean sections; two others were waiting their turns. A resident said that all four women were at high risk for complications.
Inside the recovery tent, meanwhile, Ms. Fabian and Mackendi were gone. So was the malnourished little boy. He died Friday.
By comparison, the triumphs here are small. A group of doctors linked to a global health group out of Johns Hopkins in Baltimore opened three operating rooms this week inside the hospital, so some Caesareans no longer take place in the surgical tent where doctors are amputating gangrened limbs.
Ms. Antoine on Friday also found a place to live, in a neighbor's yard. She had been sleeping in a sewage-drenched camp outside a flattened school in her neighborhood of Bel-Air. Now, she and her new daughter, Kimberly, live just behind it, under a thin white sheet near a mostly empty set of cages with a few chickens and a litter of puppies.
Her two older children, David, 12, and Osnort, 5, seem happier with their new quarters, but Ms. Antoine remains beleaguered. From her new dwelling, she can see the crushed house where she used to live — and where her husband died while she sold cookies from a pushcart downtown.
She lost everything that day, and she said she hated that she was suddenly dependent on the charity of others.
"I don't think I can live like this, just waiting for someone to bring me food," she said. She shook her head, and stared away, as her day-old daughter tried to suck her thumb.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Views From Haiti
Slide Show
Giving Birth in Haiti
Related
Haitian Lawmakers Seek to Delay Elections (January 30, 2010)
For Haitians in the U.S. Illegally, Some Help (January 30, 2010)
Cost Dispute Halts Airlift of Injured Haiti Quake Victims (January 30, 2010)
Ms. Venite's husband, Gérard Joseph, said he understood why. "Everyone is looking for their family," he said.
But not everyone sees it that way. "People here are getting a paycheck and they don't come to work," said Dr. Gerard Guy Prosper, a former head of pediatrics at General Hospital who now works in the Bronx. "And no one does anything about it."
He nearly shook with anger.
The result, for now, seems to be a scramble to keep up. On Thursday, Ms. Venite's pregnancy ended nine months after it started, with a small, still figure in a cardboard box on the dirty ground. It was only chance that kept someone from accidentally kicking it.
And on Friday by 3 p.m., two women had already had Caesarean sections; two others were waiting their turns. A resident said that all four women were at high risk for complications.
Inside the recovery tent, meanwhile, Ms. Fabian and Mackendi were gone. So was the malnourished little boy. He died Friday.
By comparison, the triumphs here are small. A group of doctors linked to a global health group out of Johns Hopkins in Baltimore opened three operating rooms this week inside the hospital, so some Caesareans no longer take place in the surgical tent where doctors are amputating gangrened limbs.
Ms. Antoine on Friday also found a place to live, in a neighbor's yard. She had been sleeping in a sewage-drenched camp outside a flattened school in her neighborhood of Bel-Air. Now, she and her new daughter, Kimberly, live just behind it, under a thin white sheet near a mostly empty set of cages with a few chickens and a litter of puppies.
Her two older children, David, 12, and Osnort, 5, seem happier with their new quarters, but Ms. Antoine remains beleaguered. From her new dwelling, she can see the crushed house where she used to live — and where her husband died while she sold cookies from a pushcart downtown.
She lost everything that day, and she said she hated that she was suddenly dependent on the charity of others.
"I don't think I can live like this, just waiting for someone to bring me food," she said. She shook her head, and stared away, as her day-old daughter tried to suck her thumb.
Haitian Lawmakers Seek to Delay Elections
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By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: January 29, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Lawmakers in the lower house of Haiti's Parliament plan to ask President René Préval to postpone upcoming elections and instead extend their terms of office by two years, United Nations officials said on Friday.
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Giving Life in a Land Overflowing With Pain (January 30, 2010)
Cost Dispute Halts Airlift of Injured Haiti Quake Victims (January 30, 2010)
For Haitians in the U.S. Illegally, Some Help (January 30, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti | René Préval
Haiti, still unable to provide basic services to its people more than two weeks after a crippling earthquake, is in no position to hold nationwide parliamentary elections, which are currently slated for Feb. 28 in most of the nation and for March 3 in the center of the country, according to a United Nations spokesman.
The government's central elections office was devastated, and some United Nations workers who had been enlisted to help Haiti carry out the vote were killed in the quake. Voting machines have been crushed and voter records destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of voters have scattered to the Haitian interior or are camped out in tent cities throughout Port-au-Prince.
"Elections cannot take place under these circumstances," said Vincenzo Pugliese, a spokesman for the agency's Haiti mission. "Parliamentarians are trying to find a negotiated arrangement, and they will submit it to the president."
United Nations officials said any term extension would have to be approved by Mr. Préval, and added that it was not clear why lawmakers had asked for two years.
United Nations officials also said they had received pledges or contributions totaling $470.5 million, meeting 82 percent of their initial target of $575 million for Haiti. Kristen Knutson, a United Nations spokeswoman, said the United States had contributed $114 million and Canada had given $57 million, followed by $54 million from private donors, $50 million from Saudi Arabia and $40 million from Spain.
The rest came from a group of mostly European countries.
Ms. Knutson also said Haiti's Ministry of Education announced plans to allow some of the country's 1.8 million schoolchildren to return to class. Schools in areas of the country that were not affected by the earthquake are expected to open on Monday.
Mr. Pugliese, the United Nations spokesman, said Friday that the Haitian interior minister would appoint a senior official for humanitarian affairs who would work closely with the United Nations to manage the aid and support flowing into the country from abroad. Other government officials would be assigned to specific aid group clusters, such as those for shelter or food.
The Haitian government, he said, has also called on all foreign embassies to report how much money their country is contributing so that the contributions can be tracked.
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By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: January 29, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Lawmakers in the lower house of Haiti's Parliament plan to ask President René Préval to postpone upcoming elections and instead extend their terms of office by two years, United Nations officials said on Friday.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Views From Haiti
Photographs
Daily Struggles in Haiti
Related
Giving Life in a Land Overflowing With Pain (January 30, 2010)
Cost Dispute Halts Airlift of Injured Haiti Quake Victims (January 30, 2010)
For Haitians in the U.S. Illegally, Some Help (January 30, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti | René Préval
Haiti, still unable to provide basic services to its people more than two weeks after a crippling earthquake, is in no position to hold nationwide parliamentary elections, which are currently slated for Feb. 28 in most of the nation and for March 3 in the center of the country, according to a United Nations spokesman.
The government's central elections office was devastated, and some United Nations workers who had been enlisted to help Haiti carry out the vote were killed in the quake. Voting machines have been crushed and voter records destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of voters have scattered to the Haitian interior or are camped out in tent cities throughout Port-au-Prince.
"Elections cannot take place under these circumstances," said Vincenzo Pugliese, a spokesman for the agency's Haiti mission. "Parliamentarians are trying to find a negotiated arrangement, and they will submit it to the president."
United Nations officials said any term extension would have to be approved by Mr. Préval, and added that it was not clear why lawmakers had asked for two years.
United Nations officials also said they had received pledges or contributions totaling $470.5 million, meeting 82 percent of their initial target of $575 million for Haiti. Kristen Knutson, a United Nations spokeswoman, said the United States had contributed $114 million and Canada had given $57 million, followed by $54 million from private donors, $50 million from Saudi Arabia and $40 million from Spain.
The rest came from a group of mostly European countries.
Ms. Knutson also said Haiti's Ministry of Education announced plans to allow some of the country's 1.8 million schoolchildren to return to class. Schools in areas of the country that were not affected by the earthquake are expected to open on Monday.
Mr. Pugliese, the United Nations spokesman, said Friday that the Haitian interior minister would appoint a senior official for humanitarian affairs who would work closely with the United Nations to manage the aid and support flowing into the country from abroad. Other government officials would be assigned to specific aid group clusters, such as those for shelter or food.
The Haitian government, he said, has also called on all foreign embassies to report how much money their country is contributing so that the contributions can be tracked.
Cost Dispute Halts Airlift of Injured Haiti Quake Victims
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By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: January 29, 2010
MIAMI — The United States has suspended its medical evacuations of critically injured Haitian earthquake victims until a dispute over who will pay for their care is settled, military officials said Friday.
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For Haitians in the U.S. Illegally, Some Help (January 30, 2010)
Haitian Lawmakers Seek to Delay Elections (January 30, 2010)
Giving Life in a Land Overflowing With Pain (January 30, 2010)
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The military flights, usually C-130s carrying Haitians with spinal cord injuries, burns and other serious wounds, ended on Wednesday after Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida formally asked the federal government to shoulder some of the cost of the care.
Hospitals in Florida have treated more than 500 earthquake victims so far, the military said, including an infant who was pulled out of the rubble with a fractured skull and ribs. Other states have taken patients, too, and those flights have been suspended as well, the officials said.
The suspension could be catastrophic for patients, said Dr. Barth A. Green, the co-founder of Project Medishare for Haiti, a nonprofit group affiliated with the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine that had been evacuating about two dozen patients a day.
"People are dying in Haiti because they can't get out," Dr. Green said.
It was not clear on Friday who exactly was responsible for the interruption of flights, or the chain of events that led to the decision. Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for Mr. Crist, said the governor's request for federal help might have caused "confusion."
"Florida stands ready to assist our neighbors in Haiti, but we need a plan of action and reimbursement for the care we are providing," Mr. Ivey said.
Mr. Crist's request did not indicate how much the medical care was costing the State of Florida, but the number and complexity of the cases could put the total in the millions of dollars. The expenditure comes at a time when the state is suffering economically and Mr. Crist, a Republican, is locked in a tough primary battle for the Senate seat that had been held by Mel Martinez.
"Recently, we learned that plans were under way to move between 30 to 50 critically ill patients a day for an indefinite period of time," Mr. Crist wrote in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services. "Florida does not have the capacity to support such an operation."
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services said the decision to suspend the flights was made by the military, not the federal health department. A military spokesman said that the military had ended the flights because hospitals were becoming unwilling to take patients.
"The places they were being taken, without being specific, were not willing to continue to receive those patients without a different arrangement being worked out by the government to pay for the care," said Maj. James Lowe, the deputy chief of public affairs for the United States Transportation Command.
Florida officials, meanwhile, said the state's hospitals had not refused to take more patients. Jeanne Eckes-Roper, the health and medical chairwoman of the domestic security task force for the South Florida region — where the Super Bowl will be played on Feb. 7 — said she had requested only that new patients be taken to other areas of the state, like Tampa.
The Health and Human Services spokeswoman, Gretchen Michael, who works for the assistant secretary for preparedness and response, said the agency was reviewing Mr. Crist's request for financial assistance. The request would involve activating the National Disaster Medical System, which is usually used in domestic disasters and which pays for victims' care.
Some of the patients being airlifted from Haiti are American citizens and some are insured or eligible for insurance. But Haitians who are not legal residents of the United States can qualify for Medicaid only if they are given so-called humanitarian parole — in which someone is allowed into the United States temporarily because of an emergency — by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Only 34 people have been given humanitarian parole for medical reasons, said Matthew Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. The National Disaster Medical System, if activated, would cover the costs of caring for patients regardless of their legal status.
Some hospitals have made their own arrangements to accommodate victims of the earthquake, which occurred on Jan. 12. Jackson Health System, the public hospital system in Miami, treated 117 patients, 6 of whom were still in critical condition, said Jennifer Piedra, a spokeswoman. The system has established the Haiti's Children Fund to cover the costs of treating pediatric earthquake victims.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, Haitian medical facilities were quickly overwhelmed. Since then, medical help has come in the form of mobile hospitals and other aid. Major Lowe said that as medical care had become available in Haiti, the need for the flights had declined significantly. But Dr. Green and nonprofit groups with a presence in Haiti said the need for evacuations remained dire.
"Right now we have in the queue dozens of paraplegics, burn victims and other patients that need to be evacuated," Dr. Green said. "And other facilities are asking us to coordinate the evacuation of their patients."
A spokeswoman for Partners in Health, a Boston charity with doctors and nurses in Haiti, said the group had a backlog of patients, many with head, spine or pelvic injuries, who needed surgery that could not be performed there.
Major Lowe said patients could still be evacuated in private planes, but Dr. Green said medically equipped planes were very expensive and generally could carry only one or two patients.
Federal officials could not provide the total number of earthquake patients airlifted to the United States, but Florida seemed to have received the bulk of them.
In his letter, Mr. Crist outlined his state's efforts to support the rescue effort, helping both the healthy and the sick streaming into the state. "Florida's health care system is quickly reaching saturation," he wrote.
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By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: January 29, 2010
MIAMI — The United States has suspended its medical evacuations of critically injured Haitian earthquake victims until a dispute over who will pay for their care is settled, military officials said Friday.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Views From Haiti
Photographs
Daily Struggles in Haiti
Related
For Haitians in the U.S. Illegally, Some Help (January 30, 2010)
Haitian Lawmakers Seek to Delay Elections (January 30, 2010)
Giving Life in a Land Overflowing With Pain (January 30, 2010)
Readers' Comments
Share your thoughts.
Post a Comment »
Read All Comments (91) »
The military flights, usually C-130s carrying Haitians with spinal cord injuries, burns and other serious wounds, ended on Wednesday after Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida formally asked the federal government to shoulder some of the cost of the care.
Hospitals in Florida have treated more than 500 earthquake victims so far, the military said, including an infant who was pulled out of the rubble with a fractured skull and ribs. Other states have taken patients, too, and those flights have been suspended as well, the officials said.
The suspension could be catastrophic for patients, said Dr. Barth A. Green, the co-founder of Project Medishare for Haiti, a nonprofit group affiliated with the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine that had been evacuating about two dozen patients a day.
"People are dying in Haiti because they can't get out," Dr. Green said.
It was not clear on Friday who exactly was responsible for the interruption of flights, or the chain of events that led to the decision. Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for Mr. Crist, said the governor's request for federal help might have caused "confusion."
"Florida stands ready to assist our neighbors in Haiti, but we need a plan of action and reimbursement for the care we are providing," Mr. Ivey said.
Mr. Crist's request did not indicate how much the medical care was costing the State of Florida, but the number and complexity of the cases could put the total in the millions of dollars. The expenditure comes at a time when the state is suffering economically and Mr. Crist, a Republican, is locked in a tough primary battle for the Senate seat that had been held by Mel Martinez.
"Recently, we learned that plans were under way to move between 30 to 50 critically ill patients a day for an indefinite period of time," Mr. Crist wrote in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services. "Florida does not have the capacity to support such an operation."
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services said the decision to suspend the flights was made by the military, not the federal health department. A military spokesman said that the military had ended the flights because hospitals were becoming unwilling to take patients.
"The places they were being taken, without being specific, were not willing to continue to receive those patients without a different arrangement being worked out by the government to pay for the care," said Maj. James Lowe, the deputy chief of public affairs for the United States Transportation Command.
Florida officials, meanwhile, said the state's hospitals had not refused to take more patients. Jeanne Eckes-Roper, the health and medical chairwoman of the domestic security task force for the South Florida region — where the Super Bowl will be played on Feb. 7 — said she had requested only that new patients be taken to other areas of the state, like Tampa.
The Health and Human Services spokeswoman, Gretchen Michael, who works for the assistant secretary for preparedness and response, said the agency was reviewing Mr. Crist's request for financial assistance. The request would involve activating the National Disaster Medical System, which is usually used in domestic disasters and which pays for victims' care.
Some of the patients being airlifted from Haiti are American citizens and some are insured or eligible for insurance. But Haitians who are not legal residents of the United States can qualify for Medicaid only if they are given so-called humanitarian parole — in which someone is allowed into the United States temporarily because of an emergency — by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Only 34 people have been given humanitarian parole for medical reasons, said Matthew Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. The National Disaster Medical System, if activated, would cover the costs of caring for patients regardless of their legal status.
Some hospitals have made their own arrangements to accommodate victims of the earthquake, which occurred on Jan. 12. Jackson Health System, the public hospital system in Miami, treated 117 patients, 6 of whom were still in critical condition, said Jennifer Piedra, a spokeswoman. The system has established the Haiti's Children Fund to cover the costs of treating pediatric earthquake victims.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, Haitian medical facilities were quickly overwhelmed. Since then, medical help has come in the form of mobile hospitals and other aid. Major Lowe said that as medical care had become available in Haiti, the need for the flights had declined significantly. But Dr. Green and nonprofit groups with a presence in Haiti said the need for evacuations remained dire.
"Right now we have in the queue dozens of paraplegics, burn victims and other patients that need to be evacuated," Dr. Green said. "And other facilities are asking us to coordinate the evacuation of their patients."
A spokeswoman for Partners in Health, a Boston charity with doctors and nurses in Haiti, said the group had a backlog of patients, many with head, spine or pelvic injuries, who needed surgery that could not be performed there.
Major Lowe said patients could still be evacuated in private planes, but Dr. Green said medically equipped planes were very expensive and generally could carry only one or two patients.
Federal officials could not provide the total number of earthquake patients airlifted to the United States, but Florida seemed to have received the bulk of them.
In his letter, Mr. Crist outlined his state's efforts to support the rescue effort, helping both the healthy and the sick streaming into the state. "Florida's health care system is quickly reaching saturation," he wrote.
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