Still, The Red Tape (Update)

I wanted to drop in a follow-up to my post about MED-1, the state-of-the-art 113 bed mobile hospital developed by the DoHS, being stranded in bureaucratic limbo for the past few days…

On Monday it was finally authorized to start fulfilling its designated purpose of providing medical care to disaster victims. The units were set up in the parking lot of an abandoned K-Mart in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, treating a puppy as its first patient. It didn’t take long for other injured victims to find the help, though, as the doctors staffing the mobile hospital treated over 100 people in the first 16 hours (story here). I still can’t help but wonder how many others it might have helped (or saved) had it not spent three days waiting on clearance for starting operations from the very department that funded its creation… Jage

A 3-year old hurricane victim receives treatment
from a member of the MED-1 mobile hospital team.