Due to the UN’s failure to provide adequate security, a team of Belgian doctors left a group of battered earthquake victims with one attending doctor Friday night. The doctor was CNN’s Sanjay Gupta.
Belgian Chief Coordinator Geert Gijs was the one who made the decision to pull the 60 doctors out of the hospital. According to Martin Nesirky, a U.N. spokesman, anyone who left did so at the volition of team leaders, as no one was ordered out of the hospital. That statement comes after an earlier report from CNN which said the doctors were ordered to vacate by U.N. officials.
Gupta, his crew and a Haitian nurse took care of 25 battered victims, but the lack of supplies made it difficult to do much. Gupta told CNN that he had never been in a situation like that before, and that it was “ridiculous.” The nurse remarked that the vacating team of doctors took most of the medical supplies with them.
Nearby riots invoked the security fear for the doctors, who left with U.N. peacekeepers in trucks.
Gupta and his makeshift team stabilized the patients into the night, but there were fears that some would not make it. The team of doctors eventually returned Saturday morning. Hopefully this doesn’t become a recurring theme, as there are many people in need of medical attention within the weakened nation.
