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Anchor Marco Werman speaks with reporter and Doctor Sheri Fink, who is at a field hospital set up by the US government in Port au Prince.

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MARCO WERMAN: Reporter and doctor Sheri Fink is at a field hospital set up by the U.S. government in the center of Port au Prince.  Sheri, is the field hospital where you’re at having the same kind of traffic as the U.S.N. Comfort that we just heard from?

SHERI FINK: No, it’s not as busy and, in fact, you might here a helicopter landing in the background coming to pick up one of the patients from here and go to the Comfort because they just have more resources than what can be done at this field hospital.

WERMAN: Right, you’re with a disaster medical assistance team from the U.S.  Is this the only government hospital in Port au Prince right now?

SHERI FINK: That’s what I was told yesterday is that there are a number of teams here going out and helping people, but this is the only actual U.S. Government field hospital.

WERMAN: And so what is exactly happening there with the DIMAT [PH] team that you’re attached to right now?  Is the medical staff able to treat anybody if the resources aren’t available?

SHERI FINK: You know, they come here with a lot of resources and they aren’t able to do as much as the Comfort, but they can still do surgical procedures here.  They can treat a lot of these wounds that are getting infected. So they are set up to do a lot of what people do need here. And I think the problem is that they need people to know that they’re here.  And the other thing that they have to do is to let all of the other medical teams that are in country know that this U.S. Government hospital exists and is capable of doing certain procedures and surgeries. So that’s been a process of getting the word out.  And because a lot of people don’t know that this exists, they even go to a neighboring hospital and offer to take some of their patients.

WERMAN: Sheri, tell us about the kind of cases that you’ve been witnessing there at the field hospital.

SHERI FINK: Well, there seeing a lot of untreated fractures, open fractures with the bone showing, which are now infected and need surgery in some cases.  That’s the kind of thing that we’re seeing here.

WERMAN: How long has the Disaster Medical Assistance Team hospital that you’re at been up and running, Sheri?

SHERI FINK: Well, that was a little bit of a difficulty here.  It took them a while to get off the ground. There were some logistical issues.  Also because they’re part of the U.S. Government, there are some very strict security procedures that they follow.  As I understand it, they started seeing patients on Monday or Tuesday.  And they’ve seen 175 overall, 50 of them yesterday. So that’s what made them say we need to get out and let more folks know that the facility exists here.

WERMAN: How is the morale among the Haitians you’ve met, Sheri?

SHERI FINK: They’re amazing and they’re so thankful for the aid that is coming through.  And they’re embarrassingly thankful.

WERMAN: Put this field hospital you’re at into a larger context for us.  I mean, you spoke of other countries having hospitals like this.  Is there enough medical help there in Port au Prince to meet the current need?

SHERI FINK: I think that the type of need that tricky, and it’s just a really hard question to answer. So on the one hand I heard one coordinator say we have more field hospitals than we have fields. On the other hand, people are developing perhaps problems that there might be longer term needs, you know, long-term post-surgical care, rehabilitation of people who have been amputees.  All of those things I think will become increasing needs in the months ahead. And then of course the massive public health needs that you have to address when you have people like outside of this hospital in a massive ten city who are getting as far as I can tell clean water, but no food deliveries, no sanitation facilities, and people just living very, very tightly packed.  That could cause this other type of disease that we haven’t been hearing or talking about much, which is infectious disease rather than cause these crush injuries that have been such the priority at first.

WERMAN: Reporter Sheri Fink in Port au Prince.  Thank you very much indeed.

SHERI FINK: Thank you.

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