Katrina's wake disperses medical challenges well beyond Gulf coast

Doctors are caring for people who evacuated storm-struck areas and who may not be able to return to their homes any time soon.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. Sept. 26, 2005.

Physicians and public health officials across the country are trying to help people displaced by Hurricane Katrina reconstruct some semblance of a medical home.

At press time, more than 88,000 evacuees were living in 443 shelters in 18 states, and hundreds of thousands more were staying with friends and relatives -- making the effort to address their acute and ongoing health care needs an undertaking of national scope and one unlike recoveries related to any previous disaster.

"Under most hurricane scenarios, folks may or may not be evacuated, and they then return to pick up the pieces," said Charles Woernle, MD, MPH, assistant state health officer for disease control and prevention at the Alabama Dept. of Public Health. "There has never been destruction on such a massive scale before. They're going to be displaced for a long time." Alabama was directly impacted by the hurricane and is a refuge for thousands of people who have resettled there from other states.

Many physicians already have begun to experience the difficulties involved. For example, George Benavidez, MD, a family and emergency physician in Corpus Christi, Texas, volunteered to care for displaced people in Baton Rouge, La., immediately after the storm hit. When he returned, he brought 80 of them back to his hometown, adding to the nearly 2,000 already there. "We had to do something," he said. "These people understand that they're not going home any time soon, and we're going to take care of them."