US hospital ship taking worst Haitian cases

US naval hospital ship has arrived off Haiti and is ready to begin taking on board the worst of the injured still alive after last week’s devastating quake, the military said Wednesday.

Colonel Richard Ellison said the USNS Comfort, a 70,000-tonne Mercy class hospital ship, will treat 30 to 50 patients at a time, chosen by Haitian officials from the thousands thronging hospitals and make-shift clinics.

“The ship is now set up to do immediate life-saving surgery,” he told reporters at Port-au-Prince’s airport, the hub of the massive international aid and rescue operation that has begun to swing into action.

“We’ve no idea how many patients are out there. We know it’s in the thousands. It may be way more than that. It just goes up every time a new facility is opened,” he said.

The Haitian civil defense department said Tuesday that at least 75,000 people were killed in the quake and 250,000 injured. International aid teams have begun arriving to reinforce local hospitals and set up field clinics.

“The Haitian health minister told me what he needs, if we can give it to him, is an entirely new medical infrastructure,” Ellison said. “We don’t know how long we are going to be here.”