Baltimore medical staff have flocked to Haiti since the devastating earthquake struck last month. Now, under an agreement between Johns Hopkins and the Navy, several teams of Hopkins doctors and nurses will spend the next 12 weeks caring for victims aboard the USNS Comfort. It's the only medical institution to have such an agreement, according to Hopkins. The first team deployed yesterday.
That group will stay for two weeks, then another group will replace them. They have a difficult task ahead of them. As our colleague Robert Little reported from the floating hospital last month, the ship was near it's breaking point , overwhelmed with urgent injuries forcing doctors to make tough decisions about who could be treated and how.
We've been updating you with reports about how teams are managing amid horrific conditions in Haiti, as well as the work being done on the Comfort. But many medical professionals have been blogging about their experiences in their own words. Here's a link to the Hopkins blog if you'd like to follow their mission.
Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston