Haiti disaster - hospital response efforts

Published: Monday, Jan. 15

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Throughout Florida, we are concerned for our neighbors in Haiti and want to offer assistance with relief efforts after Tuesday's devastating earthquake.

Shands HealthCare is one of the state's regional first-receiver hospital systems in an emergency. Our Shands and University of Florida teams are responsible for being prepared and on stand-by to assist in relief efforts related to natural disasters and other mass-casualty incidents. We stay in contact with all appropriate local and state agencies and remain ready to respond at our healthcare facilities if called.

Shands HealthCare and other Florida hospital systems are linking with and taking guidance from the Florida Hospital Association, Florida Department of Emergency Medicine, Florida Department of Health, and other state and federal agencies. The FHA has issued recommendations to state hospitals, asking them not to mobilize teams of hospital personnel to travel to Haiti until Haiti's infrastructure improves. All hospitals are keeping the state updated on our health system bed availability. At this time, there have been no requests for patient care in Shands system facilities in north central and northeast Florida.

Individual healthcare workers (nurses, physicians, clinical providers, others) can offer in-person assistance by registering on the State Emergency Responders and Volunteers of Florida (SERVFL) Web site. www.servfl.com People can register as individual volunteer responders willing to provide services during a disaster or emergency situation. They may be called into action in this case should the state need them.

Meanwhile, the University of Florida, to which Shands HealthCare is affiliated, is mobilizing faculty and staff in a variety of relief efforts. Please see below for more information.

Media contacts:

University of Florida Health Science Center Office of News & Communications
For information about response efforts by UF faculty physicians and health experts, please visit www.news.health.ufl.edu or call (352) 273-5810.

University of Florida
For information from UF's main campus, please visit www.ufl.edu or call (352) 392-0186.

Florida Hospital Association
Please visit www.fha.org or call (850) 222-9800