Still, the Red Tape is Costing Lives

Unbelievable. Even if one were to wipe out of their mind the botched and bungled rescue and aid efforts of the past few days, there is absolutely no excuse for this particular situation to be allowed at this stage in the game.

In summary, this is the tale of MED-1: an extremely well-equipped and expensive mobile hospital paid for by the Department of Homeland Security (DoHS) with a 113 bed capacity and designed for exactly this sort of emergency. After the disaster, the doctors and staff manned the mobile hospital convey and drove 30 hours from their base in North Carolina to New Orleans, where they were stopped by federal officials who would not allow them to enter the city and fulfill their sole purpose of supplying medical aid. Why? Because they couldn’t get clearance from FEMA or the DoHS. (Story here)

After being stranded for several days on a gravel lot 70 miles north of New Orleans and becoming frustrated with the continuing bureaucratic tangles preventing them from doing their job, they left the area, en route to Mississippi where they could finally be of some good. Guess what, that’s where they sit now, tied up from helping due to, yep, red tape. Seems the incredible new emergency aid machine from the DoHS can’t get approval from, once again, the DoHS to aid the sick and dying. Unbelievable… Jage

Dr. Jeffrey Guy, a trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt University who has been in contact with the mobile hospital doctors, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, "There are entire hospitals that are contacting me, saying, 'We need to take on patients,'" but they can't get through the bureaucracy.

"The crime of this story is, you've got millions of dollars in assets and it's not deployed," he said. "We mount a better response in a Third World country."