[. . .] While I can not defend the amount of money spent by USAID in helping Haiti. I can explain a little about how and why we operated the way we did. We did not pull into port and make fast at a pier for a couple of simple reasons. The water is to shallow to for our ship to safely Navigate. Plus as you look through some of the photos I posted you can see the only terminal suffered severe damage. Those cranes used to be perched on a pier that is now under 20’ of water. The cases that we handled on board were the Critical/Life Threatening patients. If we had not been able to provide the ADVANCED medical care that we did, most assuredly 95% of our patients would have died. Theses were not people that needed a few stitches and some aspirin. We are talking about people with compound femur fractures, crushed pelvis’s, crushed skulls, gangrene so far advanced you could visibly see it off-gassing. The level of medical care that we were able to provide was quite far advanced. One of the reasons why our patient numbers were so “low” is that all of the people seen onboard here, required extensive post operative care, averaging 10-12 days. Although the ship is equipped with 1000 beds, they were designed with ambulatory Marines in mind. Designed for people that could basically take care of themselves, use the head on their own, feed themselves, and only need short duration care, such as a simple broken leg or arm, minor gunshot wound, minor burn victims. Not patients suffering from multiple amputations, Neuro surgery, reconstructive facial surgery. Some quite complicated stuff was going on here. Also another reason that we stayed at anchor is to keep the “trivial” medical needs from besieging the ship. A story from right before we left….A person was hit in the head with falling concrete. Resulting in the crushing of the frontal portion of their skull. We saved the patients life, removed the debris from their brain, pulled out the broken and worthless pieces of the bone, grafted new skin on their noggin, took several CAT scans, and are presently having a prosthetic plate made that will cover the hole in their head that the injury left, and enable this person to live a fairly normal life once the plate is installed. When I saw the last fuel bill, the cost of Diesel for Marine (DFM) was $2.82. The amount that we took, was to replace what was used from the last refill last summer, and will hold the ship through it’s normal operations until next Feb when it is scheduled to go out on a Humanitarian Aid Mission. [...] As you pointed out in your reply to the writer, I am not an official source of info, I am just relaying what I observed.

http://silentrunning.tv/?p=3456

Monkeysuit
http://randompoliticalthoughtsandnews.blogspot.com/

One thing that did seem strange to me was that the ship was kept out in the middle of the bay, and medevac choppers were the primary means of getting critical care (with the ‘basics’ covered onshore, it was generally the ‘tough’ cases that went to Comfort) getting patients aboard – although, once treated, many were returned to shore via boat. This may have been due to earthquake damage at the port/dock facilities, and concerns about damaging the ship – I don’t know for sure about that, it wasn’t something my contact and I discussed directly.

Also not noted in the article was the employment of Comfort medical staff ashore – while my contact did not supply specifics (as our contact was not of an interview/monitoring nature), edical personnel did travel ashore to assist/spell/relieve/augment shore based teams and efforts. Again, on what scale, I have no idea, but the folks involved didn’t spend the entire time stuck on a big white boat twiddling their thumbs waiting for waves of patients that never materialized.

Not being involved in any way in the decision making process, I’m not making an argument one way or the other on the wisdom of sending the Comfort. Also, not being an accountant, nor adjudicator of cost/benefit ratios for health care, I’m not putting forth an opinion from that perspective, either. Simply putting forth information I’ve become privvy to via interactions with one of the non-management, non-executive participants, that doesn’t appear to be reflected in the article posted.

TIFWIW.