Babies airlifted without parents in health emergency

AS a public health catastrophe unfolded in New Orleans, hospitals in the Crescent City sank further into disaster, airlifting babies without their parents to other states and struggling with more sick people appearing at their doors.

Dangerous, unsanitary conditions spread across the city, much of which sits in a murky stew of germs.

The federal government declared a public health emergency for the Gulf Coast region, promising 40 medical centres with up to 10,000 beds and thousands of doctors and nurses for the hurricane-ravaged area.

In a stunning example of how desperate the situation has become, 25 babies who had been in a makeshift neonatal intensive care unit at New Orleans' Ochsner Clinic were airlifted Wednesday to hospitals in Houston, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Birmingham, Alabama.

Many were hooked up to battery-operated breathing machines keeping them alive. Their parents had been forced to evacuate and leave the infants behind.

"We're getting kind of at the end of our rope," with a skeleton staff of doctors and nurses who have been on duty non-stop since Sunday, said Dr Vince Voss, a paediatric surgeon.

Officials were trying to evacuate 10,000 people - patients, staff and refugees - out of nine hospitals battling floodwaters or using generators running low on fuel.

Yet even as they tried to evacuate, many hospitals faced an onslaught of new patients - people with injuries and infections caused by the storm, people plucked from rooftops who are dehydrated, dialysis and cancer patients in need of their regular chemotherapy or radiation treatments.

Storm survivors, particularly in New Orleans where floodwaters remain, face a cauldron of infectious agents, health experts said.

"You can think of floodwaters as diluted sewage," said Mark Sobsey, a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of North Carolina. Whatever infections people carry go into sewage and can be expected to show up in floodwaters - including diarrhoeal germs such as hepatitis A and Norwalk virus.

Mosquito-borne diseases may start to emerge within days. West Nile virus and dengue fever are both potential risks following a situation like the one in coastal Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Officials also cited carbon monoxide poisoning risks to people using generators and stoves.

Quotes

YOU'RE supposed to be a loving God. You're supposed to love us. And what have you done to us? Why did you do this to us? - Camille Fletcher, 83

It's devastating. The casino has kept a lot of us going. Now we have nowhere to turn. - Gwen Ray, a casino cook

Hurricane Katrina has been an eye-opener, highlighting the inadequacy of the global refining system. - Merrill Lynch

Depending on what we learn in the next few days, this may be the biggest oil-supply shock since the 1970s. - Daniel Yergin of Cambridge Energy Research Associates

The looting, it started with people running out of food, and you can't really argue with that too much. Then it escalated to this kind of mass chaos. - Mayor Ray Nagin

We had enough food for 10 days, now we'll have to equip our department heads with guns and teach them how to shoot. - Peggy Hoffman, nursing home director

I need to get me to some high ground. I wasn't born with fins. - Simon Queen, 68

They've been teasing us with buses for four days. - Daniel Edwards on buses for evacuation

It's like they're punishing us. - John Murray, 52, on the failure to provide buses

I don't treat my dog like that. - 47-year-old Daniel Edwards as he pointed at a dead woman in a wheelchair

We are out here like pure animals. We don't have help. - Reverend Issac Clark, 68

I hate to be an alarmist, but we're in a situation without much precedent. - David Pursell of Pickering Energy Partners.