MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block in Washington.
MADELEINE BRAND, host:
And I'm Madeleine Brand in California.
And in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the first medical teams sponsored by the U.S. government has gotten to work. Today it began performing surgery. The group is working out of a partly destroyed technical school next to a soccer field, where about 2,000 refugees are living in tents and lean-tos.
NPR's Joanne Silberner has been spending time with the medical team.
JOANNE SILBERNER: I'm in the first medical facility put up by the U.S. National Disaster Medical System. It's a 19 by 35 foot vinyl tent with eight cots and fluorescent lighting. There are shelves at both ends with all sorts of medical equipment, a shoe bag full of surgical tape and IV supplies, and an obstetrics kit.
Outside the school compound, there is a line of people sitting or lying on dirty blankets, waiting to be seen. At the head of the line is 35-year-old DeAuguste LeFitte(ph). He says the doctors saw him yesterday.
Mr. DEAUGUSTE LEFITTE: (Foreign language spoken)
SILBERNER: He says a wall fell on him. Four of the fingers of his left hand are cut and very swollen, and he has a big bruise on the back of his head. He got bandaged up before he came to the clinic. He's waiting to get his bandage changed. A three-inch square patch of gauze taped to his right shoulder, and blood is oozing through and there are flies around it.
Mr. LEFITTE: (Foreign language spoken)
SILBERNER: And he says he's hoping to heal up and go find his family, and he's very glad the clinic is here.
Inside the compound, past two of the 30 soldiers from the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, there are a total of three emergency rooms and two operating rooms. In one of the E.R.s, a mother is hugging her little girl.
(Soundbite of crying child)
SILBERNER: The girl has a badly infected wound across her right ankle, extending up into the middle of her leg.
(Soundbite of crying child)
SILBERNER: Two hundred and sixty-five medical professionals have been sent to Haiti by the U.S. government. There are five medical teams and a surgical one. Right now, they are just starting to establish four or five hospitals like these in Port-au-Prince. The surgical team got to this school yesterday, a day after the medical team. They're doing their very first operation - fixing broken bones today.
Peter Allen is a paramedic and public information officer.
Mr. PETER ALLEN (Paramedic, Public Information Officer): For the most part, they're traumatic injuries: fractures, lacerations, burns. Then there are some medical issues: abdominal injuries.
SILBERNER: And a baby was born here just a half hour after it opened, to a woman who's been living in the soccer field nearby, who was having trouble giving birth.
The teams staffing these hospitals trained throughout the year. They were ready to go when the earthquake hit and most got to Haiti Thursday. But they were stuck camping on the grounds of the U.S. Embassy, as the organizers of the disaster response struggled for several days to find transportation and security.
Yesterday, Andrew Stevermer, the commander of the Incident Response Coordinating Team for the Department of Health and Human Services, said...
Captain ANDREW STEVERMER (Commander, Incident Response Coordination Team): I think it's going as quickly as it can go, given the challenges we're having with our limiting factors of transportation and security.
SILBERNER: They have had a hard time finding enough security guards to accompany the teams, he says.
Patrick Cadillac(ph), who commands part of the surgical unit and helps them get here, says he understands.
Mr. PATRICK CADILLAC: We're used to a lot of bureaucracy and the difficulties of trying to go different places in the middle of a disaster. So we're used to the hurry up and wait mechanism. That's part of how the system works.
SILBERNER: But many of the team's paid volunteers who've left their jobs for two weeks or more, to live and work under some very harsh conditions, said off the record that they were very frustrated by all of the delays.
(Unintelligible), like Patrick Cadillac, they're happy to be finally helping.
Mr. CADILLAC: I'm very glad that we're here.
SILBERNER: They're looking forward to a busy time, he says.
Joanne Silberner, NPR News, Port-au-Prince.