A week at a volunteer medical clinic in New Orleans

Nurse-midwife Catalinotto provided volunteer medical care in New Orleans from Dec. 6 to 13.

The Common Ground Clinic operates out of a mosque in Algiers, a mostly African American neighborhood of New Orleans on the unflooded West Bank of the Mississippi River. Community activist and former Black Panther Malik Rahim had set up the clinic on Sept. 9, just 10 days after Hurricane Katrina struck.

With space, labor and supplies donated, the clinic reports that it has been able in three months to treat 10,000 patients at the mosque, satellite clinics around the city and in home visits. All care is free for the patients, who often make voluntary contributions.

With no billing or insurance forms to be filled out, paperwork is minimal: providers write down vital signs and a few notes. Total real cost is about $1 per visit. The volunteer staff has numbered 200 since September, some staying a few days, some for the duration.

For now, FEMA pays for prescriptions marked “Shelter eligible,” but that is set to expire Jan. 11, as will the eased rules allowing out-of-state doctors and nurses to be licensed to practice.

“Solidarity not charity” is the clinic’s motto. A week at a clinic offering essential health services for the community provides an up close and personal contact with the problems of poverty and racism faced both pre-and post-Katrina.

In one large room, about 20 by 30 feet, are the clinic’s front desk, often staffed by neighborhood volunteers, tables where nurses triage the patients and take their blood pressure and vital signs, several areas partitioned by shelving or sheets where patients get shots or consult with the doctor, and two massage/examining tables behind curtains. Tarps protect the mosque floor from the heavy traffic and dirt on people’s shoes.

In the early days after the hurricane, people, abandoned by federal and local authorities, came to the clinic for medicine and basic first aid. During Dec. 7-13 about 70 patients came in each a day, half of the rate in September.

By December, most visits were for tetanus, hepatitis and flu vaccines, renewal of prescriptions for chronic diseases—especially high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes—or illnesses like coughs, colds and asthma. All patients get their blood pressure checked and can have a blood sugar test with immediate results if they have or are at risk for diabetes.

In addition to medical services, the Common Ground Clinic offers patients a whole range of alternative therapies from herbs and Reiki to acupuncture and massage, either to treat illness and pain or to reduce the stress and tension caused by the disaster. Nutrition classes are also offered. While patients wait to be seen, social workers often sit and talk with them to assess any need for mental health services.

High blood pressure, high toxicity

The clinic finds that high blood pressure is common, even among people who had never before been diagnosed with this disease. Had this ailment been overlooked before Katrina or developed since?

A satellite clinic run at a church mainly treats immigrant men from Central America. These young workers had normal blood pressure, but suffered colds, coughs, allergies and rashes and needed vaccinations. Working in cleanup and construction, they are exposed to dirty and dangerous conditions without proper protective gear.

Long-range health concerns for all residents include the as-yet-unknown effects of exposure to molds and multiple toxins in the floodwaters, and the psychological effects of trauma and displacement.

Anecdotes heard while working in New Orleans painted a vivid picture of the situation there today.

A patient described going through much paperwork to apply for a FEMA trailer since her home was uninhabitable. After many delays her application was finally approved. But when she asked to have the trailer placed on property owned by a family member in Algiers (which had escaped flooding) she was told that trailers could only be put in the area where the person had previously lived.

Her old neighborhood was without electricity, water or any other services, but that was the only place FEMA would put the trailer. This seemingly irrational policy does have a purpose: it prevents families displaced from the poorer, largely African American neighborhoods from relocating to the wealthier, mostly white neighborhoods.

A well-to-do white man told how he rode out the storm in the second story of his house when the first floor flooded. Afterward he went out in his boat and rescued many elderly people trapped by the water. After waiting in vain for the helicopters to take the people to shelter, he brought them to his home. Having seen the utter failure of the government and relief organizations to provide for peoples’ basic needs has turned him from a supporter of George W. Bush to one who hates everything the president stands for.

A doctor described the staffing situation at a local hospital, which has partly reopened. Most of the physicians have returned, he said. But there are too few nurses and a desperate shortage of nursing attendants, housekeeping and dietary workers.