A mobile hospital used to treat 7,400 Hurricane Katrina victims in the United States could provide the model for medical response to future disasters.
"Hurricane Katrina killed 64 people, destroyed 80 percent of the dwellings, and devastated the local hospital in Waveland and Bay St. Louis in Mississippi," said the designer of the prototype hospital called MED-1, Dr. Thomas Blackwell of the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C.
"On Sept. 4 (2005) we took MED-1 on its maiden voyage to a shopping center parking lot in Waveland and started treating patients almost immediately," said Blackwell.
For the first two weeks, five emergency physicians, three trauma surgeons, an orthopedist and two anesthesiologists and support staff treated 25 to 300 patients a day. A slightly smaller staff continued to treat patients for another month.
MED-1, consisting of two 53-foot tractor-trailers, expands to a workspace of 1,000 square feet.
"It performed so well after Katrina that I think it could be the model for a mobile medical response to any kind of disaster," said Blackwell.
The hospital is detailed in the current issue of the journal Annals of Emergency Medicine.
Source: United Press International
