[New Orleans - Katrina Aftermath] Pain and poverty's a bad mix in

from The Daily Breeze

Angela Jaster was wearing a turtleneck when she fell and broke her arm and so for days, she didn't change her shirt because she couldn't raise her arm.

The swelling stretched the fabric. Even though the pain was nearly unbearable, she did not consider going to the hospital, because in this flooded city there is only one for the uninsured and it doesn't treat broken bones.

It was only when the pain sent her into a hyperventilating panic several weeks later that her family called an ambulance and had her taken to the convention center. They wait for medical care, dispensed by a skeletal staff of doctors working out of a collection of military tents.

Inside their plastic and canvas walls, the doctors can only offer the most rudimentary care: They can X-ray bones, but not set them. They can draw blood and diagnose an ailment, but not treat it beyond prescribing pills. And they can't do much more than stabilize trauma patients before sending them by ambulance elsewhere, often far away.

These tents are all that remain of Charity Hospital, which serves the uninsured.

With their building flooded, the doctors of the disbanded hospital set up the tents first in a parking lot, then secured a lease inside the convention center. Yet even this bare-bones service is in jeopardy, as the convention center -- the city's main economic engine -- plans to reopen.

In just a few weeks, the hospital will have to move the tents once again. In spite of the space's obvious limitations, the convention center was in fact an improvement, said Don Smithburg, whose medical center operates Charity.

But the city's sputtering economy badly needs the revenue generated by the 95 yearly conventions, said Sabrina Written, spokeswoman for the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

"If you have cancer, my advice is move," said Charity's emergency services chief, Dr. Peter DeBlieux. "If you need dialysis, go. Get out of here. If you have any major illness and are uninsured, we cannot possibly accommodate your needs. You will die sooner if you stay here."