Johns Hopkins Medicine
Office of Corporate Communications
Media Contacts:
Gary Stephenson: 410-955-5384; gstephenson@jhmi.edu
David March: 410-955-1534; dmarch1@jhmi.edu
September 6, 2005
DEPARTURE TO GULF COAST ON HOLD FOR THIRD HOPKINS GROUP; EARLIER VOLUNTEER DEPLOYMENT HELPS BELEAGUERED HOSPITAL
As departure of a third Johns Hopkins group of volunteers for Gulf Coast medical relief efforts remains on hold at the request of the National Institutes of Health, an earlier deployment of Hopkins physicians and nurses has helped ease the burdens of the beleaguered staff at a 462-bed community hospital outside New Orleans. The first group of Hopkins experts, which has been leading emergency assessment teams on behalf of the American Red Cross, should return to Baltimore on Wednesday.
Johns Hopkins Medicine planned to send a third group to the Gulf Coast on Tuesday morning to provide medical relief at the request of the federal government. The Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR) worked around-the-clock to assemble a group of more than 100 medical personnel in response to the NIH request, which NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, M.D., delivered directly to Gabor Kelen, M.D., director of CEPAR and Johns Hopkins’ Department of Emergency Medicine.
The new group was supposed to join a team being assembled by the NIH at a military installation in Meridian, MS, about 50 miles north of New Orleans. Medical personnel from the NIH Clinical Center and from Duke were also to be part of the NIH team, which was to staff a field hospital planned for that region. The delay in deployment initially was to allow more time for the field hospital to be set up. The NIH now is reassessing its plans for the emergency facility at that location.
Early on Sept. 5, a team of three Johns Hopkins physicians and nine nurses flew from Martin Airport to Louisiana to join in a state-to-state relief mission to aid beleaguered medical personnel in the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast region. That team of physicians from The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, as well as nurses from the Hopkins Hospital, Bayview, Howard County General Hospital and Johns Hopkins Home Care Group, is providing relief to exhausted staff at West Jefferson Medical Center, a community hospital in Marrero, La., near New Orleans. Hopkins Medicine deployed the team in response to a request for assistance from the Maryland Department of Health and Human Services to answer Louisiana's call for help.
Other Johns Hopkins medical experts left for the Gulf Coast on September 2 to lead two American Red Cross medical needs assessment teams. They were sent to determine the number of emergency medical facilities the Red Cross needs to establish there and what health care resources will be required to meet the crisis unfolding in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
The Hopkins efforts are being coordinated by CEPAR. More than 500 staff members from all parts of Johns Hopkins Medicine answered the call for volunteers that went out last week. Out of the 500, CEPAR has assembled a potential team of 109 to answer the call from NIH.
When word is received confirming the date for the group’s deployment, Hopkins volunteers will to meet at the Houck Lobby of The Johns Hopkins Hospital's Phipps Building at 6 a.m. for briefings, immunizations -- and breakfast, leave by bus at 8 a.m. to go to the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda for additional briefings with the rest of the NIH team, and from there go to Reagan National for a chartered plane flight to Mississippi at about 1 p.m. Hopkins has been informed that the NIH is setting up several facilities there, with power, food, potable water, and security. All members from Hopkins will be "federalized", and thus medical liability and worker's comp will be covered under federal laws.
