Doctors Without Borders Cargo Plane With Full Hospital and Staff Blocked From Landing in Port-au-Prince

Nightmarish flashbacks to Hurricane Katrina. This is so maddening.

thecurvature:

ekswitaj:

doctorswithoutborders:

Port-au-Prince/Paris /New York, 17 January 2009—Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) urges that its cargo planes carrying essential medical and surgical material be allowed to land in Port-au-Prince in order to treat thousands of wounded waiting for vital surgical operations. Priority must be given immediately to planes carrying lifesaving equipment and medical personnel.

Despite guarantees, given by the United Nations and the US Defense Department, an MSF cargo plane carrying an inflatable surgical hospital was blocked from landing in Port-au-Prince on Saturday, and was re-routed to Samana, in Dominican Republic. All material from the cargo is now being sent by truck from Samana, but this has added a 24-hour delay for the arrival of the hospital.

A second MSF plane is currently on its way and scheduled to land today in Port- au-Prince at around 10 am local time with additional lifesaving medical material and the rest of the equipment for the hospital. If this plane is also rerouted then the installation of the hospital will be further delayed, in a situation where thousands of wounded are still in need of life saving treatment.

The inflatable hospital includes 2 operating theaters, an intensive care unit, 100-bed hospitalization capacity, an emergency room and all the necessary equipment needed for sterilizing material.

MSF teams are currently working around the clock in 5 different hospitals in Port-au-Prince, but only 2 operating theaters are fully functional, while a third operating theater has been improvised for minor surgery due to the massive influx of wounded and lack of functional referral structures.

Source: doctorswithoutborders

44 Notes/ Hide

  1. trialittleharder reblogged this from doctorswithoutborders
  2. meganwest reblogged this from doctorswithoutborders
  3. michsaechao reblogged this from buyhercandy and added:
    I get the logistics but it’s seriously preventing organizations from helping people. We’ve seen the pictures and they...
  4. jjarichardson reblogged this from arsvitaest
  5. bitemyheart reblogged this from doctorswithoutborders
  6. buyhercandy reblogged this from doctorswithoutborders
  7. kalamazu reblogged this from listofnow and added:
    they have been saying on the news that the port-au-prince airport isn’t large enough to accommodate the heavy traffic...
  8. listofnow reblogged this from thecurvature and added:
    wtf? why? I find it odd that a reason isn’t given in this story!
  9. paroxysme reblogged this from doctorswithoutborders
  10. arsvitaest reblogged this from tsparks and added:
    Port-au-Prince/Paris /New York, 17 January 2010—Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) urges that its...
  11. dbnew reblogged this from doctorswithoutborders
  12. bonbonchocolate reblogged this from doctorswithoutborders
  13. moorewr reblogged this from tsparks and added:
    Air traffic control was taken over by the USAF. That said the situation is chaotic, so who knows whether the order was...
  14. tsparks reblogged this from doctorswithoutborders and added:
    I am sure someone...this, I really would like to hear what that excuse is. Katrina showed...
  15. minorjive reblogged this from thecurvature and added:
    Nightmarish flashbacks to Hurricane Katrina. This is so maddening.
  16. merricklee reblogged this from doctorswithoutborders
  17. sdatpatrp75 reblogged this from doctorswithoutborders and added:
    airport opened !!!
  18. margaritmuca reblogged this from doctorswithoutborders
  19. thewinterblues reblogged this from doctorswithoutborders
  20. thecurvature reblogged this from chapel-eyes-odd
  21. chapel-eyes-odd reblogged this from doctorswithoutborders
  22. doctorswithoutborders posted this

Recent comments

Blog comments powered by Disqus