USA consollidates hold on Haiti with 12,000 troop invasion

[Ed Jewett]

I was under the impression, perhaps not updated in intervening years, that the US maintained an extensive network of medical teams (the NDMS) with doctors, nurses, paramedics, etc. that, along with pre-positioned medical equipment and supplies, could be matched up with other assets, including quite literally 'inflatable' hospital operating rooms that could be assembled within 48 hours at the outside. Almost every significant medical advance in the field of trauma management and advanced emergency medical services improvements has some link back to military/wartime applications -- ambulances from WWI, MASH units from WWII and Korea, helicopter evacuation from 'Nam, etc. Given the elapsed time, it is not too inconceivable that an entire temporary hospital could have been built and staffed, if not on Hispaniola, then certainly at Gitmo. The Haitians, for the most part, do not need the same caliber and quality of health care (at high cost) that can be found stateside. That doesn't mean they don't deserve it; it simply means that the principles of triage and disaster medicine suggest that most medical needs could be met on-site.

The reality is starting to be very visible, and it is starting to stink.