| Voice Post |
| “It's been a good day for us down
here in southwestern Louisiana. We had medical teams going
out to various locations. We were escorted by sheriff's
deputies, who showed up a bit later than we had hoped,
but it worked out ok. Ah, the team that I was on, um,
went to a little town called Venton, where we set up across
the street from the local distribution point for MRE's
and water and ice. So, we had a ready-made clientele--folks
coming over after they got their handouts, and they got
their free medicine. Worked out very well. On top of that,
we had a pharmacy--a pharmacist--come over to us when
we first arrived, explained that he had been in business
since the storm had cleared, ah, even though his pharmacy
was pretty severely damaged. And he was able to fill any
prescription, basically any prescription, that we sent
to him. Ah, he was filling them based on IOU's, etcetera.
This guy, I don't recall his name, but he really impressed
me as being in it for the right reason. He was making
sure that the needs were being met. He is one pharmacist,
er, his is one pharmacy, there was another one right across
the street and they were doing the same thing. We found
that we had no problems calling prescriptions in to either
one. So that was a really nice thing. At the end of the
day we were told about a different community, called Tumee,
turned out to be three miles away from where we were set
up, and they were desperately in need of help. So we went
over and found the fire Chief, who looked a bit shell-shocked--he'd
been going, it seemed like 24-hours-a-day since the storm
had hit--possibly not 24, but close. Very tired, and he
reported there was no health care available to his people
in his fire district. So, the project for tomorrow will
include sending a team to go with one of his people door-to-door
throughout his fire district, because he knew where the
needs, he knows where the needs are. Other teams went
to towns of Diquency, Harlass, and ah, Sulfir--well there's
a Baptist church here in Sulfir about four miles, I believe,
away from where we are staying, um, where we also set
up a clinic. So that's the, ah, plan for tomorrow, is
to continue basically what worked for us today. The group
that went to Diquency is gonna relocate to Tumey, and
do door-to-door there. Patient counts--ah, we had about
70 in Venton, and about 60 in Karliss, ah, less than that
in other clinics but not terribly less. So, that's the,
uh, lowdown for now. The team is much better, and in a
much better frame of mind, than they were last night at
this time, and I'm very relieved to be able to report
that. As far as projections for next week, we're trying
to determine whether or not there will still be patients
in need of free services. The challenge in this work is
that there will always will be patients who need free
services. At what point do we as relief people pack up
and go home, because the need for us has decreased to
the pre-disaster level, or to a level that we're ok with
leaving on? That's a question I don't always have an answer
to, and uh we need to figure out as a country how we're
going to solve that.” |
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