ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
The world has geared up to respond full force to Haiti's earthquake disaster. Now, a top priority for disaster specialists is to keep the humanitarian works from gumming up. In particular, they're worried right now about what might be called medical relief gridlock.
NPR's Richard Knox has this report.
RICHARD KNOX: Most of the hospitals in Port-au-Prince have been smashed beyond use. And there are tens of thousands of earthquake victims who urgently need surgery and hospital care, so it's natural that governments and humanitarian agencies around the world are rushing sophisticated pre-packaged field hospitals into the earthquake zone.
But the United Nations today said: Please stop. This is Elisabeth Byrs of the UN.
Ms. ELISABETH BYRS (Spokeswoman for the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs): There are enough mobile hospitals in the pipeline, either on their way to ATO(ph), being sent for the future. So I said, for the moment, please send something else.
KNOX: Byrs is a spokeswoman for an agency called OCHA, the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. She says Port-au-Prince is in danger of being overwhelmed by field hospitals.
Ms. BYRS: You have three mobile hospital had been sent by Belgium, a huge one by Israel, another one by Russia.
KNOX: Not to mention others from the Scandinavian countries, from France, Nicaragua and Argentina. Medical disaster specialists learned their lesson about this kind of thing five years ago after the tsunami hit Indonesia.
Ms. BYRS: During the tsunami crisis, aid was pouring from everywhere. You had too many of this and not enough of that. We need to avoid gaps and duplication and not waste the money of the donors.
KNOX: There's a real possibility of field hospitals piling up at the Port-au-Prince airport. Paul Garwood is with the World Health Organization in Geneva.
Mr. PAUL GARWOOD (Communications Officer, World Health Organization Health Action in Crises, Geneva): A field hospital, basically, is a big thing to have to bring into the country then to deliver on, you know, broken up roads, single-lane roads, through heavily earthquake-ravaged area.
It's this kind of realities, practical reality on the ground that spread to the - being this decision that from now on there's no need for field hospitals.
KNOX: What Haiti really needs is more nurses and surgeons especially those who specialize in crush injuries. Many of Haiti's medical personnel were killed Tuesday evening. Medical teams from all over the world are trying to get into Haiti, but there's still a traffic jam at the Port-au-Prince airport, which has only one runway.
A large contingent of U.S. government relief personnel appears to be stranded for a second night on the Turks and Caicos Islands, 150 miles north of Haiti. Wendy Nesheim(ph) is a nurse in that group. She's acting team commander of a disaster assistance team from Georgia.
Ms. WENDY NESHEIM (Nurse): Everybody is ready to go. Our bags have long since been packed and we want to hit the road and go to where we need to, where we can deliver medical care.
KNOX: Veterans say disaster relief always has this kind of hurry up and wait situation, but this one is particularly agonizing.
Richard Knox, NPR News.