Largest acute-care field hospital in US history - BR, LA

[Mattie]

From the Baton Rouge Advocate:

Click here to return to 2theadvocate.com
BR likely to avoid health problems some originally feared


By ED CULLEN

Advocate staff writer

Even as medical teams gear up for the final phase of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center's use as a hurricane hospital -- infectious disease treatment -- doctors don't anticipate an epidemic of storm-related diseases.

The first five days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans Aug. 29, the hospital floor plan of the Maravich Center changed six times.

Five thousand evacuees from New Orleans arrived by air in a single day, said Bob Alvey with the Arkansas Department of Health and Human Services, among the hundreds of out-of-state emergency workers on the LSU campus.

The hospital beds on the floor of the arena where LSU plays basketball were empty Tuesday morning, as were cots and pallets in the corridor above the arena where medical and emergency workers have been sleeping.

People with hurricane-related injuries and chronically ill people suffering from exposure to the sun and the effects of being off their regular medications arrived at LSU by truck, ambulance, helicopter, even refrigerated truck, Alvey said.

About 50,000 evacuees went through triage at the Maravich Center with 5,000 admitted, he said.

Doctors are seeing some dysentery and diarrhea, along with body rashes and wounds infected by polluted flood waters.

Although Katrina "could rewrite the textbooks," said Dr. Mark Shah, "fears of cholera and typhoid are overblown."

"Being in water with bodies doesn't mean infectious disease necessarily," said Shah, part of a volunteer medical team from New Mexico.

Deployed from New Mexico Aug. 28, the Saturday before the hurricane hit New Orleans, the team was in Houston on Sunday and in the Superdome on Monday, the day of the hurricane, Shah said.

Triage -- assigning priorities for treatment according to severity of injury -- "was the most important thing we did," Shah said.

Modern, mass inoculation makes tetanus and typhus rare, although evacuees and medical workers were inoculated for tetanus, said Dr. Bernie Heilicser with the Illinois Medical Emergency Response Team.

Doctors are seeing what may be ordinary diarrhea -- "like what you get from bad jambalaya" -- or it could be "something from the event," Heilicser said.

IMERT came to Louisiana at the request of the governor's office, he said.

"It's a governor to governor thing," he said.

West Nile disease is a concern because of standing water and increased mosquito populations, Heilicser said.

"We have West Nile in Illinois, too," he said.

At the peak, there were 500 beds at the Carl Maddox Field House and 300 in the Maravich Center, Heilicser said.

Heilicser said he believes the Illinois group may be leaving by this weekend.

The Maddox Field House and Maravich Center combined to make the largest acute-care field hospital in U.S. history, said Dr. Chris Trevino of Gonzales, medical director for LSU's hurricane effort.

Click here to return to story:
http://2theadvocate.com/stories/090705/ ... d001.shtml