Dr. Sandeep Khot, a neurology resident at the University of Washington Medical Center, eagerly signed up when he heard of a way to help Hurricane Katrina survivors.
Khot, who graduated from Tulane University in the heart of hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, is on standby with 40 other medical specialists from Seattle to Bellingham, ready to roll out to help Gulf Coast evacuees.
Paramedics, nurses, respiratory therapists and counselors are just some of the professionals who have volunteered with the Medical Reserve Corps group organized by Snohomish County’s Department of Emergency Management.
One of five such groups in the state, it is funded by a three-year $100,000 Homeland Security grant. The professionals here are part of a national corps of medical specialists ready to respond to emergencies.
“It’s community involvement on a national scale,” said Terry Clark, who volunteers with logistics for the medical corps. “This is going out and helping humanity.”
Dr. Catlin Goss, a general and vascular surgeon who worked for Group Health Cooperative and Stevens Hospital in Edmonds before retiring in May, is urging fellow health care professionals to sign up. By joining an organization associated with the federal government, “you can be sent to an area where you’re most needed,” he said.
While 40 people have been cleared so far to join the regional medical corps, “since Katrina, we’ve grown dramatically,” said Christine Badger, emergency coordinator for Snohomish County’s emergency management department.
Badger said the corps has had offers of help from “just about anyone who works in the medical field.”
Nationally, 500 people have signed up with the medical corps to volunteer for Katrina relief work, Badger said.
In addition to organizing volunteers for this disaster, names and contact information are being collected into a database and sorted by profession for future disasters.
“If we needed a radiologist in Marysville, we could type that in and it would give us their exact location, where they work and live, and the mapping coordinates of where we want them to go and how to get them there,” Badger said.
Sue Hazlewood, a registered nurse who works in the emergency room at Providence Everett Medical Center, has been signed up with the medical corps for more than six months.
“It’s the desire to help people locally, being able to use my training and medical experience,” she said.
Khot said his ties to New Orleans made it difficult for him to see the destruction and hear the stories of fellow medical professionals who struggled to provide care without adequate supplies in the days after the storm.
While there were a lot of ways fellow UW medical residents could volunteer for hurricane relief, Khot choose the medical corps.
“I lived in New Orleans for five years, he said. “I have a sense of attachment to the residents. If I were to be sent out, I would love to be sent to Louisiana.”
Reporter Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@ heraldnet.com.
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