Let me start part-way through the article, which is written from a Canadian reporter’s perspective, comparing an aspect of the American aid in Pakistan to the Canadian government’s “DART” emergency response team’s efforts so far. It’s a good article by Siri Agrell of the National Post called American doctors’ own rapid response.
Everything used at Operation Heartbeat is donated, arriving on trucks and helicopters from NGOs, foreign companies and foreign governments. It is M*A*S*H, courtesy of GlaxoSmithKline (which sent some of the doctors and many of the pharmaceuticals), and the manifestation of private initiative being used for public good. It is also testament to what can be accomplished when personal comfort and government bureaucracy are left by the wayside.
I’m not pointing out this article further embarrass Canadians, but simply to show how private citizens—private enterprise—can ultimately get what people need and want more quickly and efficiently. It’s how things started, if you think about it. The liberal-left’s fixation on “everything government” is a concept proven wrong every minute of every day, and human lives are often the price that is paid.
[…] Today, as DART continues setting up, a private U.S. hospital treats 400 patients a day.
[…] “We like to improvise here,” said the New York search-and- rescue worker who is running a field hospital called Operation Heartbeat across the Jhelum river from Canada’s DART team.
“The American hospital,” as it is known in the earthquake-devastated area surrounding the village of Garidupata, northern Pakistan, has been operating from the sports field of a boys’ college since Tuesday. Volunteers are treating the wounded on stretchers placed on the grass, giving IV drips under a tarp and performing minor surgery in a tent crowded with medical supplies and worried families.
It is a stark contrast to the work of the DART team, which has set up an immaculate hospital facility but has not treated villagers as it spent a week awaiting delivery of medical equipment and supplies.
At the American Operation Heartbeat, hundreds of people line up everyday to be seen by one of eight doctors who wander from patient to patient in the same gloves, checking wounds, giving needles and gauging the effects of gangrene, dehydration and shock.
Patients are released with bottled water, blankets and food, or moved by U.S. Chinook helicopters to hospital in Islamabad. Their liftoff three times a day sends a whirlwind of surgical gloves and gauze across the camp.
“It’s not very sterile,” said Carmen Tremblay, a director with the Canadian International Development Agency who is working with DART during its 40-day deployment to Pakistan.
The American hospital may not be clean, but it is treating more than 400 patients a day, dealing with infections that have been eating away at flesh for almost two weeks and saving the lives of those who have only their lives left.
And it is kept going solely by volunteers, private donations and an overwhelming need to help. Quickly.
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PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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