Medical Teams Tend Sick Against All Odds Volunteers Set Up Clinics Amid Miss. Ruins

GULFPORT, Miss. – Ricardo Scott holds his breath and looks away as a nurse wearing a handwritten ID tag – “Doe, RN” – jabs a needle into his index finger, testing his blood sugar.

She gives the cable company worker from Atlanta a stern look as the hot morning sun filters through the tent roof. She asks what he had for breakfast and nods about the croissant with ham and egg.

“And to drink?” she inquires. “Sprite,” he replies.

Scott, 32, is a diabetic with high blood pressure and a heart condition, so the nurse scolds him gently about consuming so much sugar and tells him to come back tomorrow to this nameless clinic in a Surplus Warehouse parking lot.

Since Hurricane Katrina shuttered hospitals and doctors’ offices across the Gulf Coast three weeks ago, health-care volunteers have poured into Mississippi, where thousands were uprooted and at least 219 died.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency was overwhelmed when more than 33,000 doctors and relief workers from across the country tried to register with the agency to help with recovery efforts from Louisiana to Florida.

“It really didn’t work,” said Jim McIlwane, who directs a newly formed Information and Quality Healthcare coalition in Mississippi that is coordinating assignments for doctor and nurse volunteers coming to the state.

“At first it seemed rather chaotic as it was with everything else – some physicians just came and set up,” he said. “I don’t know of any problems that developed, but it is a little more sophisticated now.”

About 200 doctors and an equal number of nurses have come from out of state to Mississippi, joining more than 300 Mississippi physicians volunteering to help colleagues whose offices were destroyed by the storm.

Gov. Haley Barbour’s state of emergency order grants temporary licensure to out-of-state health care professionals in good standing in their home state during the Katrina recovery.

“The medical volunteers have come in to fill a critical need and their support has been immeasurable,” said Pete Smith, the governor’s spokesman.

At the nameless clinic in Gulfport, doctors, nurses and paramedics from at least 10 states deliver free, routine health care to some 600 people a day, while free meals are dished up at a church next door.

Their initiative was started independently by a medical team with the Indiana Department of Homeland Security, supported by donations from across the nation and now led by the Virginia-based Volunteers of America.

It’s become so successful the Red Cross and hospitals in Biloxi and Gulfport refer patients with less serious needs here.

“It’s a blessing, and it’s free,” Scott said. “Helping each other out, that’s what it’s all about.”

Steve Garrison, a nurse-paramedic from South Bend, Ind., manages daily operations while a doctor oversees a medical staff that has grown to include dozens of people who came on their own to the devastated region with nothing more than a desire to help.

The clinic consists of a few tents, two 40-foot trailers and a gutted black and yellow decontamination tent called “the bumblebee.” It’s tetanus shot central.

At night, the staff sleeps outside on cots, pestered by fleas, mosquitoes and the occasional tug on the sleeve by a late-night patient.

Lynda Moss, a registered nurse from San Francisco, ordinarily works at California Pacific Medical Center but headed to Mississippi with sister Becky Werner three weeks ago. They went first to Jackson, then to Stone County General about 30 miles north of the coast, then to Singing River in hard-hit Jackson County.

“We get more hugs in here than you’ve ever had,” Moss said, her tears welling. “They’re all so appreciative. It’s overwhelming. If you haven’t been here, you don’t feel it. It’s spiritually uplifting.”

Word of the clinic spread quickly on Christian radio, through Baptist bulletins and online discussion lists for doctors.

Donations poured in, from oxygen canisters and exam tables to heart monitors and drugs.