UNMC and its hospital partner, The Nebraska Medical Center, are welcoming patients and students evacuated from the area devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
Late Thursday, a 3-year-old girl from New Orleans arrived, marking the first of an unknown number of patients who might be sent to the medical center. The young girl, who is doing well, received a small liver bowel transplant several years ago at UNMC. She and her mother were on the sixth floor of the Tulane University Hospital when Hurricane Katrina came ashore.
Displaced medical students interested in attending UNMC also have contacted campus officials and could start as early as this week. UNMC administrators also are open to accepting students in other health professions, as well as helping residents who were training in the affected area.
“We are helping in every way we can think of in terms of all these peripheral things,” said John Gollan, M.D., dean of the UNMC College of Medicine. “It may seem peripheral, but to individuals, be it a resident or a medical student, these are the things that we can do.”
There are an estimated 40 to 50 former medical center patients in the affected area who have received liver, kidney, pancreas or small bowel transplants from the medical center, including 15 to 20 children, said Wendy Grant, M.D., a transplant surgeon and assistant professor of surgery at UNMC.
“All of these kids had successful transplants and are living normal lives,” Dr. Grant said, however, if they don’t take medicines on a daily basis they are at greater risk of organ rejection and, because of suppressed immune systems, also are at greater risk of developing infections.
Medical center officials don’t know how many, what type, when or how patients might be coming. “We’re open for business,” Dr. Gollan said.
The medical center is part of a national effort to coordinate the care of patients evacuated from the disaster area. On Thursday, Elias Zerhouni, M.D., director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), requested that the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) organize an emergency conference call with all U.S. medical school deans, including UNMC, on how to address the health care needs of patients affected by Hurricane Katrina. Conservative estimates are that 700 critical patients need to be placed in specialized centers across the country, Dr. Gollan said.
Dr. Zerhouni asked each dean to establish a Hurricane Katrina response unit within their faculty and to appoint one contact person to serve as that institution’s liaison with the NIH. Stephen Smith, M.D., chief medical officer for The Nebraska Medical Center, has been designated the campus contact person on clinical care issues. The AAMC, of which UNMC is a member, will coordinate communications between the institutional response units and the NIH.
“There is a sense of disbelief,” Dr. Gollan said about the disaster. “How can this be happening in our society in a setting where we have the latest and most modern technology and at a level that is just inconceivable?”
Local health professionals feel helpless, Dr. Grant said. “That’s why we’ve all come together to offer our services,” she said. “All of us in our hearts would love to run down there, but that wouldn’t help.”
Dr. Gollan agreed. “A coordinated, centralized effort is critical,” he said, to keep from hindering recovery efforts, despite one’s best intentions.
Rubens Pamies, M.D., vice chancellor for academic affairs, said this is only the beginning of the medical center helping residents in the Gulf Coast area. “A lot of us will do a lot more than what we’re doing right now,” he said.
Dr. Smith noted that as public health issues become more prominent the hospital’s biocontainment unit would be ready to accept patients. Public health issues will be managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
UNMC also has the capacity to do telemedicine and do remote consultation, Dr. Gollan said.