Mobile Medical Unit Rolls into Action

By Michael Luke
December, 22, 2005

Health center donates time and charity for hurricane victims This past Wednesday, the St. Charles Community Health Center wheeled its new Mobile Medical Unit into action at the Jewish Community Center in New Orleans. Funded with $200,000 grant from the local chapter of the United Way, initially based in St. Charles Parish, the mobile facility services regions - from New Orleans to Houma - that suffered significant damage to their medical infrastructure from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Upon its arrival at the FEMA Disaster Center in Uptown, the unit immediately sprung into action, administering medical services to walkups, providing preventive health care, immunizations, prescription medication and facilitating contacts with doctors for patients that needing further assistance.

Describing the logistical troubles and overarching benevolence that it took to get the new unit to the region, Chief Program Officer, James Comeaux said, "This mobile unit is a loner that we got from a community health center in San Jose, California. In conjunction with them, we bused it here from California." With the infusion of funds from the United Way, Comeaux said services would be provided through the May. He said that they have applied for additional grants that could allow them to operate through the rest of next year.

The new vehicle is quite an upgrade from what the center deployed after Katrina struck, as the original unit was essentially a camper. "It's more authentic, its got an exam room," Comeaux said of the retrofitted mobile home. The upgrade allows them to expand the amount and level of care they supply to patients.

Always looking to improve the level of care within the parish, Comeaux is using this trial for looking into the future of care within the parish. He hopes to encourage St. Charles Parish businesses to fund a unit of their own. "New, one of these units costs about $275,000. They come equipped with labs, x-ray, medication rooms, two exams rooms for doctors, an area for triage and computers."

The services that the mobile unit provides are free, which is vital to the center’s mission. United Way of St. Charles Executive Director, Diane Brodsky describes the medical vacuum the unit intends to fill: "As a result of Katrina, most major heathcare facilities in Orleans, Plaquemines, Jefferson and St. Bernard Parishes are, to great extent, no longer operational. These closures have displaced thousands of physicians and hundreds of thousands of patients from their primary sources of medical delivery."

"Because St. Charles Parish is the closest location to the affected areas available for urgent care, St. Charles medical facilities are experiencing predictably exponential growth in the volume of patients seen daily. To confront this healthcare delivery crisis head-on, the Mobile Medical Unit will bring essential services to those in need throughout the region," Brodsky said.

Comeaux also believes that since St. Charles Parish escaped the storms relatively unscathed there is an obligation to help those in dire need of medical care, which is what the St. Charles Community Health Center has done almost immediately after Katrina passed. In New Orleans, "We've been seeing anywhere from 50 to 150 people a day," Comeaux said, adding that demand has not diminished in their twice a week a visit.

Looking back, Comeaux recalled the center's actions: "First, we went out in St. Charles Parish. We focused on getting immunizations, and we recognized that people coming back to Algiers - which was the first area that was okay - would probably come down Hwy 90, so, we set up in the bingo parking lot. We were 100, 200 people a day, and the clinic was seeing 500 people a day. We focused on traffic patterns and where the people would be.”

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