each day because of disputes over who's going to pay the bill. Hell, you die just by having to fight the health insurance companies to pay for your cancer treatment.

[snip] BBC -

Apparently, some states were unwilling to accept the entry of Haitian patients for follow-on critical care.

"We manage air evacuation missions, but without a destination to fly to we can't move anybody. If we don't have permission to bring them, or they won't take them in, we can't fly the mission. It's pretty simple."

He declined to say which states did not want to accept patients.

A spokesman for Florida Governor Charlie Crist said he was not aware of any hospital in his state refusing patients.

In a letter on Tuesday to US Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Mr Crist asked the federal government to activate the National Disaster Medical System, which usually pays for victims' care in domestic disasters. (also see this Tampa Bay blog, for what it's worth)

He warned: "Florida's healthcare system is quickly reaching saturation, especially in the area of high-level trauma care."

_{The origin of the universe has not as yet been shown to be a conspiracy theory}

Meets a natural disaster.

Who's going to pay for profit from it?

The day Crist made his request, with 136 Haitian evacuees hospitalized in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, a state health task force member formally requested that victims be sent north -- in part to make sure Miami emergency rooms are ready for the Super Bowl.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/haiti/story/1455459-p2.html

World Food Programme measure designed to ensure vital supplies get through to everyone

By Paisley Dodds and Ramon Espinosa in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
The Independent
Sunday, 31 January 2010

The World Food Programme has started its first systematic food distribution system for Haiti since the earthquake, with 16 sites set up in the capital where only women may collect food.

Food distribution since the quake on 12 January has often been marked by poor co-ordination, gaps in coverage and desperate, unruly lines of needy people in which young men at times have shoved aside the women and the weak and taken their food.

The UN agency said in a statement that the fixed sites established across Port-au-Prince will ensure a regular flow of food and other humanitarian assistance to all those in need.

News that food aid was finally getting through came as the US military suspended the airlift of critically ill people to American hospitals, pending the resolution of a dispute over who would pay for their care.

One doctor, Barth Green of the University of Miami, last night said his team had "100 critically ill patients who will die in the next day or two" if they were not flown out. They included a five-year-old girl with tetanus from a minor leg wound, who Dr Green said would die within 24 hours without a respirator. Earlier this week the Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, wrote to the federal government asking for financial help. His state's hospitals had already treated 436 seriously injured Haitians and were "reaching saturation", he said.

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With a million Haitians homeless and disease spreading, the earthquake-shattered island is threatened by other natural forces

* Tom Phillips in Port-au-Prince
* The Observer, Sunday 31 January 2010
* Article history

Aid agencies are warning of an imminent health crisis in Haiti, as the onset of the rainy season brings fears of outbreaks of waterborne diseases in Port-au-Prince's squalid refugee camps.

With up to a million Haitians thought to have lost their homes in the earthquake, and hundreds of thousands still living in 600 squatter settlements around the capital, aid officials warn that the arrival of rain could present them with a further medical crisis after hospitals were initially swamped with patients needing amputations or treatment for crushing injuries. Haiti's rains normally come in February and the prospect of bad weather has aid workers and homeless people scared. The hurricane season starts in July.

"If it rains, there will be a great deal of disease," said Dr Thierry Causse, a GP from the French Red Cross who is working at a field clinic near the Place St Pierre refugee camp in Pétionville, where rivers of urine flow through the square.

"We are afraid of a typhoid epidemic, of a malaria epidemic. We have a lot of doctors here, but if there is an epidemic there will be a big problem. There could be a lot of dead people if it is not treated quickly and properly."

One of the largest refugee camps is in the city's football stadium, the Stade Sylvio Cator. On the pitch, thousands of homeless people have made shelters from tarpaulin, corrugated iron and rubble scavenged from fallen buildings. One family is living inside the cramped team dugout where Brazilian football stars such as Ronaldo once sat.

"Where I lived is all gone," said Benita Saint-Cyr, 37, one of three women living in the dugout with dozens of children. "I'm not dead, so all I can do now is pray."

Thervius Luckner, a community leader in the Place St Pierre camp, is also among the city's displaced population. "It always rains in February," he said. "I think it is only because of God that it hasn't rained so far. If it rains, people will be in trouble, the tents are not safe and some people don't even have tents. I got a message from a Haitian doctor to tell the people not to piss and shit in the camp because the kids will get sick."

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AP - Getting around a military suspension of medical-evacuation flights from Haiti, a Boston-based medical aid group brought three severely ill children for potentially life-saving treatment at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia on Sunday.

A 5-year-old girl with tetanus, a 14-month-old boy critically ill with pneumonia, and a baby with third-degree burns caused by sun exposure after last month's earthquake were rushed to the hospital in ambulances waiting at Philadelphia International Airport.
A former Partners in Health employee who is now a medical student in Philadelphia has been acting as a liaison between the organization, Children's Hospital, and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where other Haiti earthquake victims are being treated.

Naomi Rosenberg, 28, a second-year student at the University of Pennsylvania's medical school, said the children were each accompanied by a parent on the flight to Philadelphia in an aircraft donated by a medical air transport company.

Rosenberg said Partners in Health had gotten help arranging the flight from the office of Sen. John Kerry (D., Ma.), which made some calls to the U.S. military.

_{The origin of the universe has not as yet been shown to be a conspiracy theory}

31 Jan 2010 23:24:00 GMT
Source: Reuters
(For full coverage, click on [nHAITI])

* Flights to resume within 12 hours, White House says

* Detained Americans to appear in court Monday

* Food coupons bring more order to aid distribution (Updates with flight resumption, court hearing set)

By Mica Rosenberg and Tom Brown

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 31 (Reuters) - The U.S. government said on Sunday it would resume military evacuation flights to the United States for badly injured Haitian earthquake victims after a four-day suspension over cost and treatment questions.

The White House said the flights were expected to begin again within 12 hours. Medical workers in Haiti had said the suspension put seriously injured patients at risk.

"Having received assurances that additional capacity exists both here and among our international partners, we determined that we can resume these critical flights," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement. [ID:nN31131715]

In another headache for U.S. officials, 10 Americans face a court hearing in Port-au-Prince on Monday after their arrest on suspicion of trafficking children.

The five men and five women from an Idaho-based charity deny wrongdoing after they were arrested trying to take 33 children to the neighboring Dominican Republic without documents proving adoptions had taken place or that the children were orphaned by the quake. [ID:nN30148851]

On a more positive note, food distribution to quake survivors, which has been chaotic at times in recent weeks, went more smoothly on Sunday using a coupon system that targeted women as recipients of the rations.

Nearly three weeks after the magnitude 7.0 earthquake killed up to 200,000 Haitians and left up to 1 million more homeless, a huge U.S.-led international relief operation has been struggling to help injured and hungry survivors.

Hundreds of patients have already been evacuated to the United States for treatment, most to Florida hospitals. But Florida's governor had asked the federal government to share the burden, triggering a halt in the Medevac flights.

The White House statement on Sunday said patients were being identified for transfer, doctors were making sure it was safe for them to fly and that pediatric care was being prepared aboard the aircraft where needed.

The state of Florida is identifying hospitals to receive the patients, Vietor added.

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Small groups have taken it upon themselves to establish security, organize assistance deliveries, and maintain a minimum of sanitation in the sprawling 'tent cities' that cropped up in the wake of the Jan. 12 earthquake.

By Howard LaFranchi Staff writer
posted January 31, 2010 at 11:41 am EST
Port-au-Prince, Haiti —

As Haitians have accepted the stark reality that the camps that sprang up after the horrific Jan. 12 earthquake will be their home indefinitely, people have moved to get their new communities organized.

Enter any camp here, from the sprawling, stewing expanse of perhaps 10,000 people in the capital’s central Champ de Mars, to others on soccer fields and golf courses and inside the security barriers of now-crumbled public buildings, and in most cases you’ll find “the committee” – the small group of men and women who have taken it upon themselves to establish security, organize assistance deliveries, and maintain a minimum of sanitation.

Behind these spontaneous and often basic attempts at self-government is a very human desire to put some order – and maybe even a bit of hope – into disrupted and disoriented lives.

“The first distributions of food here were complete chaos. The groups got out of here before emptying their trucks because it was such a mess,” says Ben Constant, president of the “committee” at the Sylvio Cator soccer stadium camp, a few blocks west of the collapsed presidential palace in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. “That’s when we knew we had to get this thing organized.”

Mr. Constant, a well-known Port-au-Prince deejay who before the quake managed the stadium for the Haitian Federation of Football, sat down to figure out who was living in the camp – about 700 families, more than 2,500 people – what was needed, and who could do what.
Clean-up 'platoons'

Clean-up and security “platoons” were established – the word “platoon” harking back to Constant’s years serving in the US Army and Vietnam (he’s a Haitian citizen who lived in the US for a number of years). A clinic with what he claims is now some of the best emergency pediatric care in the city was set up – open not just to the camp population but to Haitian kids in need.

And families were assigned a number – it’s all written down by hand on a neat ledger – so that numbers are called when aid arrives, and the distribution is more orderly.

Constant says he felt compelled to organize day-to-day living at the camp because frustration was building “and something bad was going to happen.” The fact he and his family live at the stadium as well was another motivation. “We lost everything like everybody else,” he says. “We’re just trying to make what we can of this situation.”

In some cases, the camp committee members were involved in neighborhood governing boards before the quake, and simply transferred their skills and social-organizing tendencies to their new residence.

Kermly Hermé is one of those people. Active in the Bel Air neighborhood before the quake, she is now the doyenne of at least a section of the sprawling Champ de Mars camp.

A large woman with a colorful muumuu and a massive bun fashioned of tight braids, Ms. Herme says the “committee” of nine she sits on has assigned itself such tasks as keeping the nearby port-a-johns “orderly” and getting the sick and wounded to clinics.

She herself has taken on the job of going to market to buy provisions – with the small “dues” the committee collects of camp residents – to prepare a daily hot meal.

Indeed, Herme suddenly excuses herself from an interview and moves to the bubbling pots a few steps away, where a rather forlorn-looking man holds out a Styrofoam takeout container. Without a word she scoops rice onto the plate and then ladles chicken in chickpea sauce over it. The man thanks her and walks on.

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There would be no more foreign invasions (wrong); we'd take care of the people before the Wall Street failures (wrong);

A fascist state is not for the people but for the corporations (call them banks this time). Some Agonist readers accept this ideology stating that the USA is not a country of men but a country of laws as their ideology. That kind of view is near fascism. Additionally, the legal system of the USA is FUBAR, thus talking about a state of laws is as meaningful as dividing with zero.

_{-- Do you feel bad for Obama? He’s the president — he kind of asked for it.}

Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Ten U.S. missionaries detained in Haiti were charged on Thursday with child kidnapping and criminal association for trying to take children illegally out of the earthquake-hit country.

After announcing the charges, Haitian Deputy Prosecutor Jean Ferge Joseph told the Americans their case was being sent to an investigative judge.

"That judge can free you but he can also continue to hold you for further proceedings," the deputy prosecutor told the five men and five women at a hearing.

As the decision was announced, the Americans, most of whom belong to an Idaho-based Baptist church, appeared stunned, and some shook their heads in disbelief.

They were arrested last week on Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic when they tried to cross with a busload of 33 children they said were orphaned by the devastating Jan. 12 quake. Haitian authorities said the group lacked the authorization needed to take the children out of Haiti.

All 10 Americans, who ranged in age from 18 to 55, acknowledged under questioning from the prosecutor they had apparently committed a crime by seeking to take the children across the border without proper documents. But they said they were unaware of that until after their arrest.

"We didn't know what we were doing was illegal. We did not have any intention to violate the law. But now we understand it's a crime," said Paul Robert Thompson, a pastor who led the group in prayer during a break in the session.

Group leader Laura Silsby told the hearing: "We simply wanted to help the children. We petition the court not only for our freedom but also for our ability to continue to help."

Most of the Americans, who have been in jail since last Friday, were covered with severe mosquito bites. The prosecutor asked them at one point if they wanted to see a doctor.

Afterward, the missionaries did not speak to a mob of reporters as they were taken back to police headquarters to await the judge's decision.

The case could be diplomatically sensitive at a time when the United States is spearheading a huge relief effort to help hundreds of thousands of Haitian quake victims, and as U.S. aid groups pour millions of dollars of donations into Haiti.

U.S. SAYS CASE IS UP TO HAITIANS

Speaking before the Haitian charges were announced, U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the United States was not seeking to interfere in the case.

Crowley sought to play down comments on Wednesday by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Washington was in talks with the Haitian government "about the appropriate disposition of their (missionaries') cases."

"I wouldn't read too much into that," he said. "We have been in touch with Haitian judicial officials just to help understand how they were going to act in this particular case."

He added, "I would put this in the context of, you know, asking for clarifications about ... what (their) procedure would be, what the ... timeline, capacity (is) to be able to pursue this case."

After the Americans' arrest, evidence emerged that most of the children intercepted with them were not orphans. Haitian police said some parents admitted to handing over their children to the missionaries in the belief they would get an education and a better life.

Silsby told the hearing her group was taking the children to a 45-room hotel it was converting to an orphanage in Cabarete, Dominican Republic.

"We were going to house them there," she said of the beach resort. "They could stay there, go to school and live well and the parents could come and visit them."