Haiti and Hope

I am so excited! The USNS Comfort Ship arrived in Haiti yesterday, it is basically a huge floating hospital where they fly patients via helicopter from land to the deck of the ship to bring them to a higher level of lifesaving care. Here is a story about some of the first patients that were brought aboard here.

This is a similar concept to one aspect of Hurricane Katrina medical relief in New Orleans, when the USS Iwo Jima was sent to be a floating hospital, docked near downtown. What was interesting was that they pulled up anchor earlier than planned as the need was not a large in the Big Easy as they had anticipated. That is OK as we never sent any patients there, the flow tended to be from the MASH unit stationed on land nearby the ship to our hospital in the next Parish (a.k.a. County) over. Can't help but make comparisons between the two. Let's see if we are going to carry over any of our 'lessons learned.' I hope so.