National Nurses United

C A L I F O R N I A N U R S E J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 6 13 the mostly African-American evacuees. On Dec. 13, the Ameri- can Red Cross' chief executive, Marsha Evans, resigned—though the organization claims her departure was unrelated to Katrina. To RNs like VanOrder, and the sisters Lynda Moss and Becky Werner, the Red Cross has little excuse for not offering more medical services when much smaller organizations with fewer resources are running and staffing full primary and chronic care clinics in the Gulf. The free clinic where Moss and Werner volunteered was es- tablished by a small group of doctors, nurses, and techs from Memorial Hospital in South Bend, Ind. who drove down on their own initiative immediately after the storm with as many sup- plies as they could gather, ready to practice "jungle medicine" on the ground. Simply dubbed the "Pass Road clinic" because it sprung up in the parking lot of a strip mall in Gulfport on Pass Road, the clinic soon got help from other groups eager to pitch in. The National Guard donated a tent. Eighteen-wheelers laden with supplies would randomly pull up, asking if they could un- load. And Volunteers of Amer- ica, a national faith-based organization that was operat- ing in a neighboring church, arranged to have trailers pulled into the parking lot for the medical team to work in. "This thing just started snowballing and there were people pouring in—medical people, doctors, nurses. They just wanted a place to serve," said George Myers, associate director of the faith-based and community resource center of VOA southeast in Mobile, Ala. Myers was eventually assigned by VOA to provide administra- tion and oversight for the clinic. In the early days, the Pass Road clinic was vaccinating up to 400 people a day with tetanus and dealing with gashes and wounds people suffered when they tried to clean up the devas- tated landscape. Now it has shifted into providing treatment for chronic illnesses, particularly for respiratory problems patients developed after exposure to mold. The clinic is still up and run- ning, seeing close to 100 patients per day. All told, the clinic has treated about 25,000 patients, Myers estimates, and the goal is to keep it open as long as there is need. With 80 percent of the local population without health insurance and that number in- creasing every day due to people losing their jobs, Myers said there's even a possibility the clinic may become permanent. Myers said liability was also a concern for Volunteers of Amer- ica, but "we couldn't let that stop us." According to the group's research and legal department, the volunteers were protected for the most part by Good Samaritan laws that kick in after a state of emergency is declared. In addition, the group carried in- surance for its volunteers. The Pass Road clinic was not the only one around. Myers re- ports that dozens of clinics mushroomed wherever there was need. Groups like Myers' find it ironic that the Red Cross, a group founded by an RN and that for the general public is virtually syn- onymous with medical relief, actually does not provide much medical care at all. "I don't have an explanation, but I think it's obvious that the Red Cross was not there to provide any sort of organizational direction in terms of medical care, and really no one was," said Myers. "It was like the Wild West down there. That's why people like us came in and set up and just went at it." E veryone seems to agree that medical response to a dis- aster should not depend on luck or the efforts of ran- dom volunteer groups. But that's exactly what happened after Katrina. What passes as our nation's healthcare system failed the residents of the Gulf Coast. Not only was the population in dismal health to begin with due to poverty and a lack of access to healthcare services, the public health infrastructure was frag- mented, underfunded, and ill prepared. What happened after Katrina reinforced what groups such as CNA have been advocating for years: the U.S. needs a universal, single-payer healthcare system with a quality standard of care for all. "If we had a national healthcare system, people would have been in better shape in the first place because they would have been getting regular medical care," said Deborah Burger, RN and CNA president. "And after the disaster, because it would have been a real system, it could have reacted in an organized, effi- cient, and unified way. Issues like whether people have insur- ance or not just wouldn't be a problem because everyone would be covered." Until that day comes, it's clear that federal, state, and local governments need to scrape together a plan, and do it quick. "It is obvious that there was no adequate medical response avail- able by any governmental agency in the aftermath of Katrina," said Myers. "We've never had a disaster nationally on that scope and scale, but still, there was no one to give any kind of assis- tance or guidance from the governmental level. We had to fly by the seat of our pants and learn to do it as we went along." Lucia Hwang is editor of California Nurse. "It's obvious that the Red Cross was not there to provide any sort of organizational direction in terms of medical care, and really no one was. It was like the Wild West down there. That's why people like us came in and set up and just went at it."

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