Health Care
February 26, 2007
The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have put a strain on combat veterans and military families that is different from previous wars, not just because of the fighting, but because so many military personnel keep going back again and again. The strain on the Coast's military personnel also has been unusually harsh because of the added stress of Hurricane Katrina, reports The (Biloxi) Sun Herald. Although no numbers or statistics exist for Katrina's mental-health effects on the Coast's most recent war veterans, trauma experts say history, trends and anecdotes point to a huge potential danger.
Louisiana health officials are still trying to clear out a backlog of requests since Hurricane Katrina. The storm and its ensuing flooding put the Department of Health and Hospitals' New Orleans-based Vital Records Registry out of commission for a while, reports The (Baton Rouge) Advocate. On top of that has been increased demand for replacing birth, death and other records lost in the hurricane's aftermath.
January 23, 2007
New Orleans area hospitals have been using a Web page since October to improve coordination among their crowded emergency rooms, reports The Times-Picayune. After a chemical scare last month, the hospitals immediately posted online how many beds they had available, and nursing homes relayed that they could absorb patients if the hospitals were overwhelmed. While the incident did not ultimately swamp the hospitals, it illustrates how Internet technology has helped promote a spirit of collaboration among local emergency rooms, all of which have suffered from gridlock since Hurricane Katrina.
Some doctors and researches believe a type of staph infection is causing skin lesions and sores that have shown up on Katrina-relief volunteers in recent months, reports The Associated Press. The lesions could be signs of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, which has become increasingly common in south Mississippi, said Harris Evans, a doctor of internal medicine in Long Beach, Miss.
January 16, 2007
Disheartened by the disfigured city of New Orleans, many Katrina survivors are turning to plastic surgery as a pick-me-up, reports The Times-Picayune. Plastic surgeons across the region are reporting unprecedented demand for Botox injections, liposuction, eye lifts and other cosmetic procedures as patients in a deeply scarred city try to renew their own appearance. Residents might have limited control over the disfigured streetscape, doctors suggest, but they can at least get to work on their personal facades.
January 4, 2007
Mississippi's Jackson County is in line to set up a long-awaited drug court for teens at Youth Court for one year, beginning mid-February. County supervisors on Tuesday voted to allow the Jackson County Community Services Coalition to set up and run the drug court on Youth Court property, with a $37,000 grant from the state Department of Public Safety, reports The (Biloxi) Sun Herald. The coalition's director says that while 80 percent of the county's youth don't have a problem with drugs and alcohol, abuse has gone up since Katrina.
December 11, 2006
In the latest twist to the demographic transformation of New Orleans since it was swamped by Hurricane Katrina last year, hundreds of babies are being born to Latino immigrant workers, both legal and illegal, who flocked to the city to toil on its reconstruction. The New York Times reports that the throng of babies gurgling in the handful of operational maternity wards in New Orleans has come as a big surprise — and a financial strain — to this city, which before the hurricane had only a small Latino community and virtually no experience of illegal immigration.
The owners of a St. Bernard Parish nursing home where 35 people died in the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina will likely go on trial in St. Francisville, La., 120 miles northwest. The Associated Press reports that State Judge Jerome Winsberg made the decision Friday, after agreeing the day before that it would be too difficult to find an impartial jury to try Salvador and Mabel Mangano in the battered parish.
December 4, 2006
Stronger levees, better schools and increased access to health care must be the top priorities as New Orleans rebuilds, a group of more than 2,500 Crescent City natives has told city and national leaders. Connected by satellite and the Internet, Hurricane Katrina survivors in 21 U.S. cities mulled over their priorities during an eight-hour Unified New Orleans Plan workshop Saturday, according to the Houston Chronicle. Their thoughts on how to improve utilities, housing, education, flood protection and emergency services in New Orleans will be included in the final recovery plan, which is expected to be submitted to the city's leaders in January.
October 30, 2006
For now the official Hurricane Katrina death toll stands at 1,697. But Columbia University geophysicist and earth scientist John Mutter believes the number is "well in excess of 2,000," reports The Associated Press. That's because Mutter isn't just counting people who drowned in Katrina's waters or were crushed because of the storm's powerful winds. Mutter's count also would include the despondent evacuee who committed suicide, the suspected looter fatally shot, and the dialysis patient who died because the storm interrupted treatment.
October 24, 2006
In an effort to fully account for those killed by Katrina, researchers at the Earth Institute at Columbia University are compiling an online list of all Gulf Coast residents who died as a result of the hurricane. John Mutter, deputy director of institute, said the project's goal is to identify all of those who died from both direct and indirect effects of the storm, as well as due to social standing or decisions made by policy makers. According to the article posted on the institute's Web site, more than 1,250 names have been collected to date by reviewing obituaries and coroners' lists, then following up with calls to family members, churches and social service organizations to build a more comprehensive picture of each victim.
October 20, 2006
A Louisiana state panel endorsed plans Thursday to offer health care to everyone in Hurricane Katrina-devastated greater New Orleans — amid warnings that without more federal aid soon, few doctors and nurses might be left to deliver the care, reports The (Baton Rouge) Advocate. The Louisiana Health Care Redesign Collaborative ratified a 67-page document laying out its vision for universal access and managed care. No one on the panel voted against sending the plan to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt so that talks on a final agreement can begin between federal and state government officials. Leavitt wants to use federal aid for the poor, which has largely gone to the state-run charity hospital system, to purchase private insurance for the uninsured.
October 16, 2006
Pinched for nurses since Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans-area hospitals have increased wages to capture a share of the local talent pool and in some cases have left beds empty for want of caregivers. Now, several hospitals are looking abroad for help, according to The Times-Picayune. Rather than scrimmage for nurses in the tight local market, East Jefferson General Hospital dispatched its chief operating officer in August to the Philippines, a former U.S. territory that annually sends thousands of English-speaking nurses overseas. Sixty-one Filipino nurses have agreed to trade in their meager wages for life in a struggling foreign city.
October 11, 2006
More than a year after Hurricane Katrina killed 35 nursing home patients, Louisiana nursing homes are better prepared to evacuate if another storm threatens, Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Tuesday, pledging state support to help get the elderly out of harm's way if a home's plan unravels. One of the lessons of Hurricane Katrina was the need to better evacuate nursing homes and to ensure, for example, that different homes haven't contracted with the same busing services to move residents, she said. The Associated Press reports that a state-federal review of roughly 70 nursing homes in the hurricane-affected area found that all had plans that do not rely on the same resources; all indicated they are prepared to evacuate successfully, if necessary, Blanco said.
October 6, 2006
Fewer than 190,000 people are living in New Orleans a year after Hurricane Katrina, according to a door-to-door survey released Thursday. The population of 187,525 is about 41 percent of the 454,000 people estimated to be living in Orleans Parish before the storm hit Aug. 29, 2005. The survey was conducted for the Louisiana Recovery Authority and the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals by the Louisiana Public Health Institute, reports The Associated Press. Mayor C. Ray Nagin has cited a slightly higher figure, and last month said he believed the city was on track to reach 300,000 people by year's end. (See Government Data for link to survey reports.)
The Louisiana Public Health Institute has posted 2006 Louisiana Health and Population Survey reports for some hurricane-affected parishes on its Web site.
2006 Louisiana Health and Population Survey
October 5, 2006
The husband-and-wife owners of a nursing home near New Orleans where 35 patients died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina listened calmly Wednesday as their attorneys pleaded not guilty for both on 35 counts of negligent homicide and 64 counts of cruelty to the infirm, reports The Associated Press. Salvador and Mabel Mangano were arrested and booked shortly after the Aug. 29, 2005, storm, but they were not charged until late last month because a grand jury could not convene earlier in badly damaged St. Bernard Parish. The couple remain free on bond.
September 28, 2006
The Louisiana State Medical Society on Wednesday came out strongly in support of the physician accused of killing four critically ill patients in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, reports The Associated Press. Louisiana's attorney general has alleged that Dr. Anna Pou and two nurses at Memorial Medical Center injected a lethal cocktail of sedatives into the four bedridden patients after determining they were too ill to be moved. The trio faces second-degree murder charges, pending the outcome of a New Orleans grand jury investigation.
September 27, 2006
The number of valid child abuse and neglect allegations have gone down in Louisiana — most likely the result of a decrease in population following hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Statistics released by the state Department of Social Services show that 20 children died from child abuse or neglect during the 2006 state fiscal year, which ran from July 1, 2005, to June 30, reports The (Baton Rouge) Advocate. Anna Fogle, president and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse Louisiana, said people have been so focused on storm recovery that reporting child abuse and neglect has taken a lower priority.
September 13, 2006
The Louisiana Family Assistance Center, the government effort cobbled together to handle reports of missing residents scattered by Katrina and Rita, resolved more than 99 percent of the cases, according to its final report. The Associated Press reports that emergency response planners hope technology will reduce the need for such massive efforts in the future. Hurricane Katrina displaced an estimated 1.4 million residents of New Orleans and nearby parishes. But because many were sheltered in areas close to where Rita hit weeks later, some were evacuated a second time. The result was 13,200 cases of people reported missing. (For report link, see Government Data listings.)
September 8, 2006
New Orleans' coroner said Thursday he has the material he needs to present findings to a grand jury that will consider indictments against a doctor and two nurses at Memorial Medical Center accused of killing patients in the chaotic days following Hurricane Katrina. The findings will include autopsy and toxicology reports and an official classification of the four deaths involved, The Associated Press reports. Dr. Frank Minyard said he is evaluating the materials, but declined to comment on the findings or say when he would present them. Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan has said he would wait to review the findings before asking a grand jury to look into the deaths.
Houston may be hot, unfriendly and frustratingly difficult to navigate, but more than two-thirds of the poorest New Orleans evacuees who fled to the city after Hurricane Katrina plan to stay, a Rice University survey released today shows. Almost 69 percent of the 1,081 people queried in the National Science Foundation-funded study conducted in July by political science professors Rick Wilson and Robert Stein said they likely will remain in Houston, according to the Houston Chronicle. Wilson and Stein say their findings reflect the view of 35,000 to 40,000 evacuees, about one-fourth of the displaced New Orleanians thought to be living in the city.
September 6, 2006
The owners of St. Rita's Nursing Home, arrested in the deaths of 34 patients who perished in Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters, are suing the government, saying federal, state and local officials failed to make sure vulnerable citizens were evacuated as the storm approached. The Los Angeles Times reports that the lawsuit, filed last week, names the Army Corps of Engineers, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, Atty. Gen. Charles C. Foti Jr. and numerous other authorities and agencies.
September 5, 2006
New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is a harsh place for people with serious mental illnesses, reports The Times-Picayune. As other parts of the health care system have begun to bounce back, the shortage of inpatient beds for the mentally ill remains the biggest hole in a safety net that was decimated by the storm. The controversial decision to close Charity Hospital has meant that mental patients are routinely recycled back to the streets, where they strain the overburdened Police Department and pose a danger to the community and to themselves.
August 18, 2006
Frail elderly residents who were evacuated from nursing homes in Gulf Coast states suffered more than the vast majority of those who were not moved during last year's hurricanes, according to a report to be issued today by the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services. The report is based on site visits and interviews with administrators and staff members at 20 nursing homes in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, all with emergency plans that meet the requirements of federal and state law. But it found that the plans had many deficiencies, especially in ensuring the safe and comfortable evacuation of residents with complex needs, reports The New York Times.
August 10, 2006
In an episode that began as a traffic stop for erratic driving in New Orleans, John McCusker, photographer for The Times-Picayune, was halted, pinned a police officer between cars, fled and drove into several cars and construction signs before being stopped again and finally subdued with a Taser gun. In both stops, the police say, he begged officers to shoot him, telling them he did not have enough insurance money to rebuild his home. The public unraveling of a well-known local photographer shined light again on the troubled state of mental health in New Orleans, according to The New York Times. The state has estimated that the city has lost more than half its psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists and other mental health workers, many of whom relocated after Hurricane Katrina.
August 3, 2006
You go to the drugstore to refill a prescription and learn the doctor has left town. You spend an extra week in pain because disk surgery isn't an emergency. That's what it's like in New Orleans today if you need health care. The system is in serious condition, 11 months after Hurricane Katrina, according to The Associated Press. Susan D'Antoni, executive director of the Orleans Parish Medical Society, said at least half the area's 2,300 physicians are back. "The problem is, it's not a good mix. You may be back in Orleans Parish, but your doctor may not be," said Jack Finn, president of the hospital council.
August 2, 2006
Over the past several months, psychiatrist James Barbee has witnessed a disturbing trend among his patients in New Orleans — a noticeable slide from post-Katrina anxiety into more serious clinical depression. Nearly one year after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast frustration over the slow pace of recovery is taking a toll on the region's overall mental health. Initially, complaints reflected what some locals have dubbed "Katrina Brain": general fatigue brought on by the disruption of their lives, difficulty concentrating, mood swings and mild depression. In most cases, it was nothing that reached critical levels, according to Time. But since the first of the year, Barbee says, "there's been a steady increase in depression, specifically major depression."
August 1, 2006
Louisiana chemist Wilma Subra is continuing her crusade to warn Gulf Coast residents of the dangers in contaminated sediment and sludge washed up by Katrina. Subra, who is also a microbiologist, took tidal sediment samples along the Coast after the hurricane, according to The (Biloxi) Sun Herald. She said the showed high levels of bacteria, yeast, mold and the toxic metalloid arsenic, she said, adding that such a combination can cause skin infections, respiratory illness and poisoning. Officials at Mississippi's Department of Environmental Quality have said that South Mississippi soils naturally contain heavy metals like arsenic and that levels of the samples fall in that range. Doctors specializing in skin conditions and the respiratory system did not agree on whether her findings were confirmed by patient complaints.
July 27, 2006
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast last year, it revealed serious shortcomings in nursing homes' evacuation plans, reports the Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch. A year after the disaster, flaws in emergency plans still have not been fixed according to "Disaster Preparedness: Limitations in Federal Evacuation Assistance for Health Facilities Should be Addressed," a report released the Government Accountability Office. The GAO found that facility administrators faced several challenges, including deciding whether to evacuate, obtaining needed transportation and maintaining outside communication. The GAO also found that the Department of Homeland Security's National Response Plan — the basic framework for how the federal government helps states and local governments during disasters — fails to address the evacuation of nursing home residents.
See Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch article
July 25, 2006
Doctors and nurses might not stay behind to care for patients during another New Orleans hurricane in fear they could be the next targets of Louisiana prosecutors. A doctor and two nurses are facing murder charges, accused of administering a "lethal cocktail" of drugs to four patients at Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina hit the city. For medical professionals, the accusations represent a new danger of hurricane duty some are unwilling to face, according to Reuters. In addition to the specter of prison, potential dangers include difficulty with careers and civil suits.
July 21, 2006
In mid-September, Dr. Anna Maria Pou began to feel the pressure of a fledgling investigation into alleged mercy killings at New Orleans Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina. She was advised by a colleague to hire an attorney and "be forthcoming." But she first sought legal advice from lawyers working for Tenet, the health care company that supplemented her salary, reports The Times-Picayune. The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled in April that attorney-client privilege protected some parts of her conversations, but not others. Records show at least one Tenet employee was subpoenaed as a state witness and questioned about what the doctor said about her doings on Sept. 1. Court records do not show what Pou said to Tenet lawyers, but they do include some details about what was said to her. During one call, a Tenet attorney told her: "I don't represent you. I am a corporate attorney. I suggest you get your own counsel."
July 19, 2006
Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti Jr. announced second-degree murder charges against Dr. Anna Pou and nurses Lori L. Budo and Cheri Landry on Tuesday, alleging that in the days following Hurricane Katrina they killed four patients by giving them a lethal mix of drugs at flooded New Orleans Memorial Medical Center. "We're talking about people that pretended that maybe they were God," Foti said. "This is not euthanasia. It's homicide." An affidavit said tests determined that lethal doses of morphine paired with another central nervous system depressant were administered on Sept. 1 to four patients. Sources have told CNN the conditions at the hospital were dire, and the killings allegedly were carried out to speed evacuation. Attorneys for Landry and Pou each said that their clients plan to contest the charges.
July 6, 2006
With the verified sexual-assault count among Hurricane Katrina evacuees nearing 70, police and women's advocates in the Gulf Coast area say the risk of violence against evacuee children and women is intensified by crowded, temporary housing 10 months after the storm. Lt. David Benelli, commander of the New Orleans Police Department Sex Crimes Unit, said sex-assault charges against people who are not strangers to their accusers are mounting. In January, the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a list of Katrina evacuees so it could urge those witnessing or suffering sexual violence to contact them for help, but director Judy Benitez said FEMA sent a form letter denying the request, Women's eNews reports.
June 5, 2006
Days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Louisiana/Mississippi border, it became clear that people with disabilities were having trouble getting help. Census figures indicate that more than 20 percent of the population affected by Hurricane Katrina had some type of disability, according to National Journal. As people flowed out of New Orleans last August, complaints began flowing in from those with disabilities who were poorly served during the evacuation.
May 26, 2006
The Homeland Security Department would lose jurisdiction over the National Disaster Medical System under a bill approved Wednesday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, CongressDaily reports. The bill calls for removing the National Disaster Medical System from the purview of Homeland Security within nine months. The measure places the system, which helps coordinate the federal response to major health and medical emergencies, back under the purview of the Health and Human Services Department, undoing a shift made in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The bill also seeks to defend against future jurisdictional incursions by codifying into law that HHS serves as the primary agency for addressing national health emergencies and disasters. "The things we saw on the ground in the wake of [Hurricane] Katrina really underscored why we need to move that function back to [HHS]," said Rep Michael Burgess, R-Texas.
May 19, 2006
A continuing rise in reports of out-of-state deaths related to Hurricane Katrina caused Louisiana's official toll to jump by 22 percent to 1,577. The Department of Health and Hospitals added 281 more victims to the count Thursday to reach that total, reports The Times-Picayune. State officials say that for weeks after it made landfall Aug. 29, Hurricane Katrina kept claiming victims, often in more subtle fashion and in other states: elderly and ill evacuees too fragile for grueling trips on gridlocked highways, infants stillborn to mothers who were shuttled to other cities when they should have been on bed rest and residents overcome with anxiety by 24-hour television broadcasts of the devastation back home.
May 18, 2006
An environmental group says thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims in Mississippi and Louisiana may be living in unsafe conditions after tests it conducted showed dangerous levels of formaldehyde in some Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers, reports The Associated Press. The Sierra Club on Wednesday asked for a congressional hearing after it claimed that 30 out of 32 trailers it tested had levels of formaldehyde that were unsafe.
May 12, 2006
Older residents who struggled through Hurricane Katrina will have until the end of the year to sign up for the new Medicare prescription drug benefit. But taking advantage of the extension past the May 15 deadline will cost them. In a nod to the difficulties endured by evacuees in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the Bush administration waived the Monday sign-up limit that applies to all other Medicare beneficiaries. But it has refused to waive the financial penalty for signing up late. A spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Thursday that hurricane evacuees will have a 1 percent penalty tacked onto their new Medicare premium for every month they delay after the deadline, The Times-Picayune reports. It is a penalty that never goes away, and it keeps growing. Beneficiaries are charged every month they stay in the program, and the penalty will rise annually along with the premium. Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-La., said he inquired about the policy Thursday and was told that evacuees will be given a partial break: For 63 days after May 15 they won't be assessed a penalty, but on the 64th day would be hit with a 2 percent penalty immediately, as if the grace period didn't exist.
May 11, 2006
Spurred by dozens of deaths in south Louisiana nursing homes that failed to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina, a state Senate committee agreed Wednesday to let the state take a more active role in overseeing future evacuations, reports The Times-Picayune. A compromise bill that cleared the Senate Health and Welfare Committee would require nursing homes to beef up emergency plans and submit them to the state for approval by Aug. 1, but also calls for the state to serve in a backup role in case the arrangements made by nursing homes fall through. The bill was crafted in weeks of backstage negotiations between Gov. Kathleen Blanco's administration and the nursing home industry, which came into the current legislative session with starkly different visions of how future evacuations should be handled. Nursing home representatives had been pushing for the state to assume much of the cost and responsibility for moving residents, while the state Department of Health and Hospitals was proposing to assume new oversight duties while leaving nursing homes in charge of carrying out their own emergency plans.
May 9, 2006
With hurricane season just a few weeks away, health care professionals are talking about the lessons learned during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, according to a HealthDay News report. It wasn't the injuries that stymied relief efforts in Louisiana, said Dr. Lynn Witherspoon, chief information officer for the Ochsner Clinic Foundation, a health care system with 25 clinics across the region. The biggest problem was getting medical records so that patients could have the medications that keep them going. Hundreds of thousands of patients suddenly found themselves with no access to their heart, diabetes, blood pressure and other life-sustaining drugs. Many had to wait and then virtually start over with doctors they didn't know who then began the treatment process from scratch.
May 8, 2006
For nearly 270 years, medical care for New Orleanians with no insurance could be summed up in two words: Charity Hospital. With an abundance of doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals in its clinics, operating rooms and world-renowned emergency department, the colossus on Tulane Avenue and its sister institution, University Hospital, handled everything from well-baby clinics to diabetes monitoring to treatment of gunshot wounds. But in addition to sending tens of thousands of residents across the United States seeking shelter, damage caused by Hurricane Katrina forced the state to relocate the hospitals' medical services, as well as the people who offer them. Some practitioners and specialties, such as trauma care and HIV outpatient services, have returned to New Orleans. However the medical equivalent of one-stop shopping is over for the time being — and the impact ranges from inconvenient to life-threatening, The Times-Picayune reports.
April 28, 2006
In a new study of the post-Katrina health of New Orleans' firefighters and police officers, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that about one in five showed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder and that slightly more than one in four had symptoms of depression, reports The Times-Picayune. The people performing the interviews for the study found plenty of misery. According to their report, about 95 percent of the police officers and firefighters said their homes were damaged, and more than half the people in each group said their homes were uninhabitable. Nearly 70 percent of the police officers and almost 60 percent of the firefighters said they weren't living with their families.
April 26, 2006
Many people who walked through Ochsner Medical Center's doors after Hurricane Katrina were New Orleans' desperately poor, according to USA TODAY. Before Katrina, they would have been cared for by the state's aging system of charity hospitals, to which virtually all state-administered aid for the uninsured and indigent is channeled. But the hurricane destroyed the city's two indigent-care hospitals and Ochsner, one of three big local hospitals to stay open, became a magnet for post-storm medical emergencies. State and federal funds to pay for care, however, did not immediately follow. Most private hospitals are ineligible for the assistance, which came to about $1.1 billion in 2004.
Arguing that Hurricane Katrina's devastation has given Louisiana a unique opportunity to redesign its broken health care system from scratch, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt promised the full support of his office Tuesday to help the state create "the finest health system in the world." Addressing a joint House-Senate health-care committee, Leavitt challenged state officials to come up with a redesign plan that allows everyone in New Orleans to have a "medical home" and that focuses more on primary and preventive care than emergency services, reports The Times-Picayune.
April 24, 2006
Some 1.2 million children under the age of 18 were living in counties rendered disaster zones by Katrina, reports The Associated Press. As many as 8 percent, or 100,000, are expected to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, according to one assessment. Most experts say the toll is likely far higher. Of the first 1,000 children screened by the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, 27 percent displayed symptoms of trauma, including nightmares, flashbacks, heightened anxiety and bedwetting, says Dr. Joy Osofsky, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at LSU's Harris Center for Infant Mental Health.
April 19, 2006
Forget about "Katrina cough." Despite claims that there have been more coughs, sore throats and runny noses since Hurricane Katrina roared through the New Orleans area, a new state health department study has found that the storm's lingering local effects do not include an increase in severe respiratory problems, reports The Times-Picayune. A check of more than 56,000 local emergency room visits from October through March showed that slightly more than 1 percent were for asthma and about 7 percent were for respiratory infections. These rates were similar to national statistics, researchers said.
Massive evacuations during hurricanes Rita and Katrina opened the eyes of Texas health officials to an unforeseen landscape of behavioral and other health challenges, Texas Health Commissioner Eduardo Sanchez said Tuesday. Until then, the Houston Chronicle reports, health professionals never imagined the implications of evacuating recovering heroin addicts on daily methadone treatments to faraway shelters. That example is just one of many lessons health officials learned last fall, Sanchez said, as 450,000 evacuees of Hurricane Katrina poured into Texas just weeks before Hurricane Rita prompted mandatory evacuation orders of 22 Gulf Coast counties.
Seven months after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans's health care system is floundering. The fact that Charity Hospital, once the city’s biggest, exists in a 30-bed tent is just one of the most obvious symptoms. Before the storm, greater New Orleans had 16 acute-care hospitals, according to U.S. News and World Report. Now there are nine, with just 2,000 of the 4,000 beds the city used to have. A year ago, there were about 63 nursing homes. Today, there are 34. Ninety clinics provided safety-net care; now there are 19. No one knows how many doctors and nurses remain in the Crescent City; thousands fled because their houses were ruined or their children's schools closed. Charity had the region's only Level 1 trauma center; the closest now is in Shreveport, 350 miles away.
See U.S. News and World Report article
April 18, 2006
Families displaced by Hurricane Katrina are suffering from mental disorders, chronic conditions like asthma, and lack of prescription medication and health insurance at rates that are much higher than average, a new study has found. The New York Times reports that the study conducted by the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and the Children's Health Fund is the first to examine the health issues of those living in housing provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Based on face-to-face interviews with more than 650 families living in trailers or hotels, it provides a grim portrait of the hurricane's effects on some of the poorest victims, showing gaps in the tattered safety net pieced together from government and private efforts.
April 13, 2006
After weeks of delay, the New Orleans coroner is allowing DNA samples to be taken in an effort to identify remains of presumed Hurricane Katrina fatalities found in New Orleans since mid-February, reports The Times-Picayune. The collection of samples from the 15 bodies could provide breakthrough identifications for a number of families longing to know the fate of their loved ones lost after the storm. A coordinated effort by state and federal agencies, genetics experts, universities, private labs, contractors and volunteer organizations has been building a data pool of DNA profiles for hundreds of people who might be related to unidentified victims.
March 31, 2006
With the 2006 hurricane season approaching, Louisiana continues to have gaps in its health-care emergency response system that can only be corrected with funding and a uniform plan, the head of a Louisiana Recovery Authority subcommittee reported Thursday. Dr. Les Johnson, who heads the LRA subcommittee, said there has been no shortage of disaster planning that gives the illusion of preparedness, but it has not been accompanied by funding, reports The (Baton Rouge) Advocate.
March 30, 2006
As many as 100,000 children will develop post-traumatic stress disorder in the wake of Hurricane Katrina according to a research study announced this week. Sociologist Lori Peek reported that 1.2 million children live in disaster declared counties. Right now — about six months after Hurricane Katrina hit — is when children will start showing symptoms, she added, according to Disaster News Network. Peek was part of a team of sociologists that traveled to hurricane-stricken areas and studied children's experiences.
See Disaster News Network article
March 29, 2006
The city of New Orleans has only 456 staffed hospital beds, compared with 2,269 before the city was struck by Hurricane Katrina, according to government auditors who say rebuilding the health care system will be vital for bringing people back. While emergency care is available, auditors noted that patients at two hospitals waited up to two hours to be unloaded from ambulances. They also found patients being kept and treated in the emergency room because beds weren't available elsewhere. The Associated Press reports that the Government Accountability Office said several planning efforts are under way about how to rebuild that system, but no clear consensus has emerged.
March 27, 2006
Nearly seven months after Hurricane Katrina claimed the lives of at least 70 nursing home residents in southeast Louisiana, state officials have yet to reach consensus on how to get the elderly and disabled out of harm's way for the hurricane season that begins in a little over two months. The Times-Picayune reports that the nursing home industry and its legislative allies want the state to assume much of the burden and cost of evacuations, while Gov. Kathleen Blanco's administration is pushing a plan that would provide new state oversight but ultimately would leave nursing homes responsible for carrying out their own emergency plans.
Doctors, former patients and preservationists rallied outside a public hospital that closed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, urging officials not to abandon the shuttered medical center. The Associated Press reports that Charity Hospital, the city's only Level 1 trauma center, was closed after its electrical system was ruined by basement flooding. Officials have said the hospital cannot be saved because of asbestos in the interior and bacteria that flourished in the steamy, late-summer air after the Aug. 29 hurricane.
March 23, 2006
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation into the drownings Tuesday of two construction workers could take six months, officials say. The Associated Press reports that the two construction workers drowned after passing out from hazardous fumes during a demolition project at the hurricane-ravaged Grand Casino Gulfport in Harrison County, Miss. Coroner Gary Hargrove said Wednesday. The men were pumping water out of a portion of the casino that collapsed during Hurricane Katrina when the accident occurred. Officials believe the two, working in water about 6 feet deep, became trapped in a tight space.
March 21, 2006
The discovery of two bodies in the wreckage of a neighborhood devastated by Hurricane Katrina seven months ago has served as an unsettling omen to families still searching for missing relatives. The Los Angeles Times reports that eight bodies have been found since March 1, and with about 1,400 people still unaccounted for, Louisiana officials said they could not rule out the possibility of finding others. Until recently, recovery teams were unable to retrieve bodies from the neighborhoods that were rendered uninhabitable and designated off-limits to residents.
March 17, 2006
Dispersed across the nation, survivors of Hurricane Katrina are suffering such severe psychological distress that the federal government has launched the broadest — and probably the most costly — counseling program in the nation's history, reports the Los Angeles Times. An estimated 500,000 people need some form of mental health service, which could include treatment for post-traumatic stress, substance abuse counseling, anti-anxiety medication or even art therapy for children too young to talk out their grief.
Swamped with a twofold to threefold increase in indigent patients since Hurricane Katrina closed Charity Hospital in New Orleans, Jefferson Parish's public hospitals are running alarming budget deficits and begging for help from the state. The Times-Picayune reports that public hospitals across the state, in addition to private nonprofits such as Ochsner Clinic Foundation, have absorbed a rush of poor patients since Charity succumbed to heavy flooding and wind damage. But directors of these hospitals say they are not getting the kind of compensation that used to go to Charity.
March 16, 2006
Baton Rouge’s general-acute-care hospitals have been bursting at the seams since Hurricane Katrina hit. The (Baton Rouge) Advocate reports that hospital officials say the influx of patients won’t die down anytime soon. All the general hospitals have seen a big jump in the number of uninsured patients that look to them for care, straining the facilities’ budgets.
March 14, 2006
Hurricane Katrina’s continuing impact is most frequently discussed in terms of dollars, trailers and voters, but a medical study is using a different means of measurement: babies. The (Baton Rouge) Advocate reports that the Woman’s Hospital Research Institute in Baton Rouge and Tulane University Health Science Center in New Orleans have begun a study of women who became pregnant before the devastating hurricane came ashore. The National Institute of Child Health and Development is funding the study, titled “Born After the Storm.”
March 13, 2006
Psychiatrists and counselors throughout Shreveport-Bossier City, La., are seeing a steady stream of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina, reports The Shreveport Times. All report seeing people experience grief, frustration, loss of their sense of self and almost no resolution.
A $54,000 National Science Foundation grant will fund a University of Southern Mississippi professor's research into the potential impact of Hurricane Katrina on children in the affected region. The Clarion-Ledger reports that Manuel Sprung, an assistant professor of psychology at the university's Gulf Coast campus in Long Beach, is focusing on how intrusive thoughts associated with the storm can undermine concentration levels of children ages 5-8.
March 10, 2006
Tenet Healthcare, the nation's second-largest health care company — besieged for years by allegations of Medicare fraud and overbilling taxpayers — now finds itself as the operator of a New Orleans hospital where some doctors and staff are under investigation for allegedly deliberately killing patients in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. CNN reports that Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti is investigating what he calls "credible" allegations that patients at Tenet’s Memorial Medical Center were euthanized in the frantic days following the storm. Foti has told CNN he has "a very good case." Tenet sent a letter to CNN on Wednesday stating that it understands from the Louisiana Attorney General's Office that it is not a target of the investigation and insists that all of its Gulf Coast hospitals, including Memorial, were prepared in advance for the hurricane.
March 9, 2006
Calling it "totally unacceptable" that nearly 2,000 people remain unaccounted for more than six months after Hurricane Katrina, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., Wednesday called on federal investigators to determine whether overly rigid governmental policies have made it harder for people to find missing family and friends. The Times-Picayune reports that some lawmakers think the Federal Emergency Management Agency, citing privacy concerns, may have contributed to the delays by refusing to provide timely information about the locations of people receiving federal disaster aid. The belief is that most of the missing people are alive.
March 8, 2006
Hospitals, physicians and other health care providers that took care of uninsured hurricane evacuees can start applying this week for reimbursement of those costs. But how much would be paid and just when is still up in the air, The (Baton Rouge) Advocate reports. The reimbursement would come from a special pool of $2 billion in federal funds allocated by Congress last month for health care aid to hurricane-struck states. Most of $2 billion is going to cover the state costs of Medicaid, the traditional health insurance program for the poor. The remainder is going to pay hospitals and others for uninsured care.
March 7, 2006
There is no national registry for missing people after a natural disaster and there are no plans to establish one in time for the coming hurricane season, according to government spokesmen. The (Biloxi) Sun Herald reports that a lack of a national call center would be no problem if, as Hurricane Katrina has made many realize, the disaster that caused people to become missing did not span multiple states. There are approximately 300 cases of missing people in South Mississippi that are still unsolved because of poor communications and a waste of time and resources in the weeks and months after Katrina, according to several local officials involved in the search.
March 2, 2006
Months after Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters receded, New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward was still covered with a layer of crusty dark dirt. National Public Radio reports that some scientists and environmental activists say the dried muck from the floodwaters that still covers some inner city neighborhoods could pose health risks to people who return. Experts disagree about whether the floodwaters are the source of the high levels of contaminants or if the contaminants were in the soil before the storm. But the fact that there are high levels of lead, arsenic and other hazardous chemicals is not in dispute.
See National Public Radio article, hear report
March 1, 2006
Despite intensive efforts to reach the scattered refugees of Hurricane Katrina, nearly 2,000 such names remain on the state's list of people still unaccounted for, out of 12,000 that had once been reported. Even now, new missing persons reports trickle in; there were 99 over the two-week period that ended Feb. 5. But The New York Times reports that officials say the number is less a measure of the storm's lethal power, or even of the lives it upended, than of the trauma, disarray and instability that persist half a year later. Only about 300 of those on the list are believed to have died in the flooding; many of the rest are adrift in America, having failed, for a variety of reasons, to remain in touch with their own families.
February 24, 2006
Although local generosity and federal cash have largely met the emergency needs of Louisianans who fled Hurricane Katrina, Houston officials are now confronting a new burden: long-term health care. The Houston Chronicle reports that though about half of the 50,000 evacuees scattered in shelters across Houston lacked health insurance, nearly all who needed care were covered by a special Medicaid waiver. But that waiver expired on Jan. 31. As a result, local officials say, thousands of adults have been added to the area's uninsured population.
February 23, 2006
Louisiana State University and the federal Department of Veterans Affairs soon will begin making plans for a joint venture that could result in two new teaching hospitals being built in downtown New Orleans, state officials said Wednesday. The Times-Picayune reports that LSU and the federal agency will announce a memorandum of understanding that could prove to be the first major step in the long-term rebuilding of health care infrastructure that was badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The long-term vision is for the new facilities to be part of a medical complex that includes teaching, research and high-end health care services for a broad spectrum of patients.
February 22, 2006
Some New Orleans-area doctors say they think that Legionnaires’ disease is being spread via the battered refuse left by Hurricane Katrina, the Los Angeles Times reports. The doctors say the bacterium that causes the disease, a severe form of pneumonia, may be growing in the soggy remains of buildings flooded after the hurricane. But some experts question whether the bacterium can grow in that environment and state officials insist there is no public health threat.
College students displaced by Hurricane Katrina are resilient and coping well, but many are experiencing moderate levels of depression, according to the preliminary findings of a study by Louisiana State University and University of Houston researchers. Researchers compared 68 displaced New Orleans-area students who enrolled at LSU after Hurricane Katrina with 68 students who were enrolled at LSU before the storm, the Houston Chronicle reports.
February 21, 2006
The official death toll of Hurricane Katrina is more than 1,300. The unofficial toll of the storm may take that a lot higher, The Washington Post reports. Though not quantifiable in the orthodox fashion because so many area health agencies are still in disarray, a belief exists among many here that the natural mortality rate of New Orleanians — whether still in the city or relocated — has increased dramatically since, and perhaps because of, Katrina. Families say that their kin who had been in good health are dying, and attribute that to the stress brought on by the hurricane, flooding and relocations.
Since Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana Attorney General has been investigating allegations of mercy killings in hospitals in New Orleans. National Public Radio reports that the office has witness accounts suggesting patients at Memorial Hospital may have died from lethal doses of painkillers administered by medical staff in the days following Hurricane Katrina.
See National Public Radio article
February 17, 2006
A survey of the lives of more than 130 storm victims in South Mississippi revealed that while a vast majority of storm's victims were old enough to have lived through Hurricane Camille, about half moved there sometime in the last 35 years. The (Biloxi) Sun Herald reports that most came from the Midwest and Southeast, but at least seven different victims held European citizenship. More than 90 percent of the storm's victims were over the age of 40 and almost two-thirds were older than 60.
There are no longer corpses in plain sight, as there were for days after Hurricane Katrina hit. But nearly six months after the storm, officials believe there are still dozens of unrecovered bodies in New Orleans, The New York Times reports. They even have a pretty good idea where they are. But no one is looking for them.
February 16, 2006
Nearly six months after Katrina struck, there are still a half dozen free clinics in coastal Mississippi seeing hundreds of patients a day. At the same time, hundreds of doctors whose offices were destroyed are struggling to rebuild their practices, reports the Associated Press. Some complain that jump-starting their businesses will be tougher as long as clinics are providing free care and free medicine.
Up to a third of those who lived through the death and destruction of Hurricane Katrina may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and cannot find treatment, according to mental health professionals. Reuters reports that symptoms of the syndrome, which is commonly diagnosed in combat veterans, include insomnia, nightmares, flashbacks, estrangement and attempted suicides. Experts say PTSD victims and those with more serious mental health distress, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are going untreated because of the battered health care system.
February 13, 2006
Five months after Hurricane Katrina, officials are trying to figure out what to do with the bodies of more than 200 unidentified or unclaimed victims, according to The Washington Post. Initially, state authorities had selected a cemetery site in Carville, La., and in preparation for the burials, had graded and planted the ground. A memorial was envisioned there. But that did not sit well with many in New Orleans who argued that a proper burial includes the sense, spiritual and geographical, of "going home." Most of the dead come from the city.
February 9, 2006
A deep unease has settled over the Big Easy with the approach of the first Mardi Gras since Hurricane Katrina and the disturbing juxtapositions that are certain to result, the Chicago Tribune reports. Floats soon will move down boulevards that just five months ago were under water. Drunken revelers will careen across the same sidewalks where ailing and elderly storm victims dropped dead in the late-summer heat. And only a few blocks from the colorful tourist havens in the French Quarter, the Garden District and downtown, endless brown vistas of flood-ruined houses still stretch as far as the eye can see.
February 8, 2006
Most of the New Orleans region's doctors either left for good after Hurricane Katrina or haven't returned yet. And those who are back face huge risks in restarting their practices, The Times-Picayune reports. As many as 4,486 doctors, including 1,270 residents training at local hospitals, evacuated from Orleans, Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes, according to a University of North Carolina study issued two weeks after the storm. Now, the region's doctor population might be as few as 1,200, according to the Orleans Parish Medical Society, which used Internet surveys, calls from members and recent advertisements to produce the estimate.
February 3, 2006
Gov. Kathleen Blanco told a Senate committee Thursday that Louisiana officials "did the best we could" in coping with the horrible circumstances of Hurricane Katrina, a comment that drew a scolding response from the panel chairwoman. The Times-Picayune reports that Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, called it completely unacceptable that the state denied the Louisiana Nursing Home Association direct access to the state's rescue system and that the state's transportation secretary responsible for developing plans to evacuate poor and elderly people from New Orleans hadn't done any work on the project.
January 31, 2006
Louisiana officials did virtually nothing to prepare to evacuate poor, sick or elderly people as required under a state emergency plan adopted months before Hurricane Katrina hit, according to newly released documents. The Washington Post reports that state Transportation and Development Secretary Johnny B. Bradberry told Senate investigators that he was assigned the task in April, months before the Aug. 29 storm. But his department had no buses or drivers to execute the mission.
January 27, 2006
Months after Congress passed legislation to speed the delivery of federal money to Louisiana's storm-ravaged health-care system, local hospitals are still waiting for the first payments, while their costs climb into the hundreds of millions of dollars, hospital administrators told a congressional subcommittee Thursday in New Orleans. The Times-Picayune reports that stunned subcommittee members said officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency had assured them that the agency had sent $400 million to Louisiana to pay for storm-related health-care services. The members also said they thought Congress had removed the main policy barriers that were blocking funding from flowing through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services immediately after the storm.
January 26, 2006
The federal government will spend tens of millions of dollars to reopen a portion of storm-damaged University Hospital in New Orleans as a temporary general care and trauma facility by the fall, hospital managers said Wednesday. The Times-Picayune reports that the move will mark the return of the state's Charity health care system to the city's downtown medical district after University and nearby Charity Hospital were cleared of medical staff and patients in the days after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city. Only one adult-care hospital, Touro Infirmary in Uptown, is operating in the city.
January 25, 2006
The mental health system in Louisiana was never in great shape, according to a report by National Public Radio. After Hurricane Katrina, demands for mental health services throughout the state have increased sharply and people in crisis are not getting care, the report found.
Hear National Public Radio story
January 24, 2006
Nearly five months after Hurricane Katrina turned hospitals into disaster areas, emergency preparedness experts are urging hospital officials to learn from mistakes made in New Orleans to better prepare for the next calamity, USA TODAY reports. Medical facilities must work quickly with cities, states and the federal government to prevent the kind of desperation that engulfed hospitals isolated by the hurricane, experts told federal officials and hospital executives who gathered at Georgetown University for an emergency planning workshop last week.
The emergency rooms of the bedraggled New Orleans region are facing their own emergency. As thousands of residents have begun returning in the weeks since New Year's, there are far more sick people than there are doctors, nurses, beds and equipment to take care of them, The New York Times reports. Only seven of what had been 15 adult acute-care facilities in the city and three surrounding parishes are open, and only one-third of the acute-care beds.
Massive uncertainty in post-hurricanes Louisiana, with hundreds of thousands of residents displaced and jobless, make it difficult to predict what will happen to health insurance prices in 2006, experts said Monday at the Louisiana Insurance Department’s 10th annual health-care conference. The (Baton Rouge) Advocate quotes Mike Kasper, president and chief executive officer of Coventry Health Care of Louisiana Inc. as saying that Hurricane Katrina could generate losses of more than $150 million for the health insurance industry.
January 19, 2006
More than 3,200 people are officially still unaccounted for nearly five months after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and the state medical examiner wants the search to resume for those missing from the most devastated neighborhoods. The Associated Press reports that a total of nearly 11,500 people were reported missing to the Find Family National Call Center, a center run by federal and state workers. The reports included people from throughout the Gulf Coast area, but most were from Louisiana. As of today, all but about 3,200 had been located, the agency said.
January 9, 2006
The debate had raged for years over whether to revamp Charity Hospital in New Orleans or tear down the Art Deco building on Tulane Avenue and replace it with a smaller facility better attuned to economic reality in an era of increasingly market-driven medicine. Katrina ended the debate and may even have framed a decision on the hospital's future, The Times-Picayune reports. While many details remain to be worked out, there is consensus on this much: Charity Hospital, the 21-story colossus built by heirs to Gov. Huey Long's political machine, will never be a hospital again. Instead, state officials are about to choose among a current crop of four sites that at least temporarily could accommodate what was unarguably the hospital's forte: trauma care.
January 6, 2006
Harvard Medical School next week will launch the most comprehensive study ever of the psychological impact of a major disaster, recruiting 2,000 survivors of Hurricane Katrina for at least two years of regular interviews on how they are coping. The Boston Globe reports that the study will document the levels of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress among the survivors, levels that mental health specialists say are likely to reach all-time highs because the death and destruction was so far-reaching. Four months after the hurricane, there are reports of an unusual number of suicides among survivors and a sense of gloom so pervasive that people call it ''the Katrina blues."
December 22, 2005
More than one medical professional is under scrutiny as a possible person of interest as Louisiana's attorney general investigates whether hospital workers resorted to euthanasia in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, a source familiar with the investigation has told CNN. CNN first reported in October that staff members at Memorial Medical Center had discussions about euthanizing patients after the hurricane flooded the city on Aug. 29, cutting off power and stranding hundreds of thousands of residents. Now, for the first time, Attorney General Charles Foti has told CNN that allegations of possible euthanasia at the hospital are "credible and worth investigating."
December 19, 2005
The bodies of New Orleans residents killed by Hurricane Katrina were almost as likely to be recovered from middle-class neighborhoods as from the city's poorer districts, such as the Lower 9th Ward, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of data released by the state of Louisiana. The analysis contradicts what swiftly became conventional wisdom in the days after the storm hit — that it was the city's poorest African-American residents who bore the brunt of the hurricane. Slightly more than half of the bodies were found in the city's poorer neighborhoods, with the remainder scattered throughout middle-class and even some richer districts.
A study by The New York Times of more than 260 Louisianans who died during Hurricane Katrina or its aftermath found that almost all survived the height of the storm but died in the chaos and flooding that followed. Of those who failed to heed evacuation orders, many were offered a ride or could have driven themselves out of danger — a finding that contrasts with earlier reports that victims were trapped by a lack of transportation. Most victims were 65 or older, but of those below that age, more than a quarter were ill or disabled.
December 15, 2005
Some New Orleans neighborhoods are covered in a layer of sediment containing with levels lead above the concentration the federal government considers hazardous to human health, a new study has found. The lead poses the greatest hazard to small children who might play in that dirt, said Steven M. Presley, a toxicologist at Texas Tech University, who led the soil survey team, according to The Washington Post. The hazard could be reduced by keeping the dirt from becoming dry and airborne, by covering it with uncontaminated soil or, if necessary, by hauling it away.
December 12, 2005
The federal government's medical response to Katrina was bungled by a lack of supplies and poor communication, according to a congressional report based in part on interviews with doctors who responded to the hurricane. The report says that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was unable to effectively set up field hospitals and handle the medical emergencies in the Louisiana Superdome, where thousands of evacuees were stuck for days after New Orleans flooded, the Associated Press reports.
Even as the official toll from Hurricane Katrina continues to rise when more bodies are found in once-flooded homes, the real total may never be known. The Associated Press reports that the victims are scattered far and wide, and the connections of their deaths to the storm are not necessarily obvious. Officially, as of Sunday, the states counted 1,075 deaths in Louisiana, 230 in Mississippi, 14 in Florida and two each in Georgia and Alabama. But the states have different definitions for storm-related deaths.
December 9, 2005
Despite attracting 85 percent of its Hurricane Katrina-scattered students back to campus in January, Tulane University on Thursday announced an unprecedented restructuring of one of the nation's most prestigious universities, including layoffs, cuts or consolidations in colleges and academic programs and the elimination of eight sports as the institution grapples with $200 million in storm-related losses. The Times-Picayune reports that about 230 faculty members will be laid off. Tulane also said it will reduce its clinical programs at the university's medical center as part of a forced adjustment to post-Katrina life in a smaller New Orleans.
December 7, 2005
The emotional impact from Hurricane Katrina — which displaced nearly 2 million people, eradicated entire neighborhoods, separated families and reopened racial wounds — is far beyond what mental health experts in this country have ever confronted, they say. The Washington Post reports that in the extreme cases — and there have been many — those who managed to survive the storm itself have hanged themselves, overdosed and put guns to their heads. The number of suicides in neighboring Jefferson Parish this fall is more than double the fall 2004 total.
December 5, 2005
Many hospitals in the New Orleans area are short-staffed and struggling to care for a growing population of patients who are returning to their homes three months after fleeing Hurricane Katrina, USA Today reports. Lack of housing is the main reason for the shortage, so one hospital is boarding 250 employees in hotels in the city, running shuttles back and forth.
December 2, 2005
Local medical providers are the first to acknowledge that there are gaps in health care in Louisiana and Mississippi that long predate Hurricane Katrina, the Los Angeles Times reports. The two states routinely rank last among all 50 in measurements such as infant mortality and early death. In the storm's aftermath, outsiders are coming face to face with the region's entrenched problems, such as its poor primary care system.
November 29, 2005
Forensic scientists in Mississippi are facing a doubled workload: in addition to homes and businesses, Katrina decimated one of the main forensic labs that police departments along the Gulf Coast and beyond counted on to analyze evidence, according to a report in The Meridian (Ms.) Star.
November 28, 2005
Providing medical care is one of the most daunting challenges for a rebuilding New Orleans, and choices made now will determine whether one of the nation's poorest cities can adequately care for its many uninsured citizens, The Washington Post reports. Katrina damaged more than a dozen hospitals and uprooted thousands of private physicians. Nearly three months later, health care remains scarce. The last military medical unit has left, leaving only Touro and Children's hospitals partially reopened.
November 23, 2005
After making last-minute tweaks, Louisiana lawmakers have sent legislation with more than $600 million in state spending cuts to Gov. Kathleen Blanco for her signature, The (Baton Rouge) Advocate reports. The House bill is the state's solution for the nearly $1 billion hurricane-related shortfall in tax collections caused by Katrina and Rita. The biggest cuts, in health care and education, will likely cause thousands of state workers to be laid off and a reduction in the free prescription medication that the poor can receive.
$600 million cut from state budget
November 16, 2005
More than 800 people in Louisiana whose remains were discovered in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have yet to be identified, reports the Los Angeles Times. In an example of the bureaucracy that has dogged the government's storm response, it has taken state and federal officials until now—11 weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit—to figure out how to access the money to hire a contractor to do the DNA testing. The Federal Emergency Management Agency can provide certain forms of help only through reimbursement, but the state hasn't been able to pay for the contracts because of its financial crunch.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-dna16nov16,1,230236.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Hurricane Katrina has delivered tens of thousands of new children to Texas public schools from evacuee families and many more Medicaid enrollees—making some state officials anxious about the federal government's willingness to absorb those costs in the future, the San Antonio Express-News reports. Texas' lieutenant governor says that he expects the federal government to reimburse all of the hurricane's related costs, but he is concerned about the future costs, which officials say would be about $550 million a year just for public education and Medicaid.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA111605.05B.Hurricanecost.11363196.html
October 17, 2005
The New York Times dissected some $19 million in purchase-card spending for hurricane relief in its Saturday editions. Some highlights include $271,838 in total spent on medical supplies (carved up into three segments to fall below a spending cap), $382,162 spent at Office Depot stores and $223,000 for flip-flops for evacuees.