Puerto Rico Goes Dark – it must be scary times for local dialysis patients

[iolaire]

As always good people and the government are trying to help - thank you - but its hard:
http://www.npr.org/2017/10/05/555796327/following-disaster-teams-in-puerto-rico
No power, no air conditioning, no local water, no local food, no Internet and very limited communication. Hurricane Maria falls somewhere between Hurricane Harvey in Houston — where teams stayed in a hotel — and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, where they created a field hospital in Port-au-Prince and slept outside.

And they face lack of communication and the resulting bad information as "information" makes its way between people.
Back on the fourth floor, a distraught woman appears with a shocking story: the hospital an hour away in the city of Aguadilla, she says, has shut down, kicked out the patients, and it smells like decomposing bodies.
...
The team roars up to the Good Samaritan Hospital of Aguadilla. Two heavily armed federal agents enter first, then comes the DMAT expecting the worst.

They walk down a corridor past bewildered nurses and are ushered into a quiet, orderly office. There is nervous laughter.
...
The experience is a good example of what happens after a traumatic weather event, when there's no communication — rumors fly, and people worry about their hospitals.

[Simon Dog]

A sad story on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/22/us/zakaria-bargain-puerto-rico-cnntv/index.html

The dialysis part starts just after 1:00.   Three dialysis patients died because an evac chopper never arrived.

[Bill Peckham]

Dios Mio  I have to think that the number includes hundreds if not thousands of people who relied on dialysis.

Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria

Abstract
BACKGROUND
Quantifying the effect of natural disasters on society is critical for recovery of public health services and infrastructure. The death toll can be difficult to assess in the aftermath of a major disaster. In September 2017, Hurricane Maria caused massive infrastructural damage to Puerto Rico, but its effect on mortality remains contentious. The official death count is 64.

METHODS
Using a representative, stratified sample, we surveyed 3299 randomly chosen households across Puerto Rico to produce an independent estimate of all-cause mortality after the hurricane. Respondents were asked about displacement, infrastructure loss, and causes of death. We calculated excess deaths by comparing our estimated post-hurricane mortality rate with official rates for the same period in 2016.

RESULTS
From the survey data, we estimated a mortality rate of 14.3 deaths (95% confidence interval [CI], 9.8 to 18.9) per 1000 persons from September 20 through December 31, 2017. This rate yielded a total of 4645 excess deaths during this period (95% CI, 793 to 8498), equivalent to a 62% increase in the mortality rate as compared with the same period in 2016. However, this number is likely to be an underestimate because of survivor bias. The mortality rate remained high through the end of December 2017, and one third of the deaths were attributed to delayed or interrupted health care. Hurricane-related migration was substantial.

CONCLUSIONS
This household-based survey suggests that the number of excess deaths related to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico is more than 70 times the official estimate. (Funded by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and others.)

[iolaire]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/puerto-rico-data-suggests-hurricane-maria-death-toll-is-much-higher-1528928688

Information released on causes of death shows notable jumps after August 2017 of conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and septicemia, a blood infection caused by bacteria. The data doesn’t address whether such conditions were connected to Hurricane Maria. But after the storm, many people on the island had trouble getting medication or receiving medical attention.

[kickingandscreaming]

What a nightmare.  I can only imagine and I don't like what I see.

[MooseMom]

These Americans are the wrong color.

[GA_DAWG]

And speak the wrong language.