My experience is what I see from press and television reports. As a nurse I can see many things seriously wrong. The same disorganization and mismanagement that occurred at the Katrina disaster is now occurring in Haiti and there seems to be inadequate attention to logistics. The press does not use their communications medium adequately to followup and hold people accountable for what they are doing and not doing.

Why should the only still standing hospital in Port au Prince not have pain meds and anesthesia? A helicopter could deliver needed supplies every day to this hospital. And setting up distribution networks for supplies appears to not be a priority. And we also have a relatively empty hospital just a few miles from the city– so we are not getting the patients to available services. We need to be evaluating all of the critical elements of emergency responses, doing report cards and publicizing the results. And even holding people to account when there is serious dysfunction early in disaster response by highlighting the problems and demanding change.