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American Morning
Look at Medevac Unit
Aired March 24, 2003 - 09:02 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to go with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who is along with a medavac helicopter someplace in Iraq. Sanjay, we may have to cut you off, but what is the latest from there in the meantime?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: We are still here, everyone is wearing gas masks, because a gas alarm has just been sounded. The sound you hear behind me is a helicopter. The helicopter that in injured civilians. Let's take a look over there, you can see it. It's stirring up a lot of sand. There are injured civilians that have come here to the medical care unit, to the FRSS, to try and get medical care.
I want to give you a sense of even despite the fact is there a gas alert going on right now, the medical care does not stop. That still has to continue. We're going to see here and watch closely. You can see the ambulances are actually out at the helicopter now. They're actually going to bring those patients back into the FRSS behind me, which is right behind me. Again, the FRSS is the forward resuscitative surgical sweep. The helicopter does not stop its blade actually, so a lot of sand is being picked up. That makes it very hard, as you can imagine, to move the patients, but that's exactly what they have to do.
This was sort of an emergency. We don't know anything about these patients, who they are, the injuries, they're finding out about this, just as you are, on the fly here.
ZAHN: Sanjay, I know in your last hit, you described the amount of sophisticated kind of work they can do. Run through that again for the folks who missed your last live shot.
GUPTA: Because of all the noise, it's very hard to hear anybody in New York or Atlanta. But let me just say, if take a look around here, you can see all the various corpsmen, nurses and doctors available, ready to go. They have their masks on, they have their full mop suits on. Some people are continuing to rest (ph) here as that gas alarm has just recently gone off.
I'll say as well that those 44 doctors, nurses and corpsmen can take care of 30 patients at a time, they can perform up to 18 operations. They're telling me they think their entire resources may be getting utilized over the next 24 hours. It is a very, very dynamic, fluid situation. Nobody really knows what's going on. Nobody knows who sounded the gas alarm. Nobody knows if in there fact is any chemical or biological agents in the area.
But as you can tell, everyone is being extremely cautious.
Patients that are coming in, we're just now hearing rumors that four of them may in fact need immediate surgical care. We have given you a glimpse of that in the past, showing you exactly what this surgical suite here is capable of.
There are four patients here who may need to go straight to the operating room. Of course, we will continue to follow that along as they go in, if they go in. We'll see what kind of injuries there are, and you'll get a real sense of all that the FRSS is capable of doing right here in the desert. I want you to take a look around you, get a sense of the really austere conditions.
ZAHN: All right, we'll leave Sanjay there, as he describes a very intense situation now.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired March 24, 2003 - 09:02 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to go with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who is along with a medavac helicopter someplace in Iraq. Sanjay, we may have to cut you off, but what is the latest from there in the meantime?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: We are still here, everyone is wearing gas masks, because a gas alarm has just been sounded. The sound you hear behind me is a helicopter. The helicopter that in injured civilians. Let's take a look over there, you can see it. It's stirring up a lot of sand. There are injured civilians that have come here to the medical care unit, to the FRSS, to try and get medical care.
I want to give you a sense of even despite the fact is there a gas alert going on right now, the medical care does not stop. That still has to continue. We're going to see here and watch closely. You can see the ambulances are actually out at the helicopter now. They're actually going to bring those patients back into the FRSS behind me, which is right behind me. Again, the FRSS is the forward resuscitative surgical sweep. The helicopter does not stop its blade actually, so a lot of sand is being picked up. That makes it very hard, as you can imagine, to move the patients, but that's exactly what they have to do.
This was sort of an emergency. We don't know anything about these patients, who they are, the injuries, they're finding out about this, just as you are, on the fly here.
ZAHN: Sanjay, I know in your last hit, you described the amount of sophisticated kind of work they can do. Run through that again for the folks who missed your last live shot.
GUPTA: Because of all the noise, it's very hard to hear anybody in New York or Atlanta. But let me just say, if take a look around here, you can see all the various corpsmen, nurses and doctors available, ready to go. They have their masks on, they have their full mop suits on. Some people are continuing to rest (ph) here as that gas alarm has just recently gone off.
I'll say as well that those 44 doctors, nurses and corpsmen can take care of 30 patients at a time, they can perform up to 18 operations. They're telling me they think their entire resources may be getting utilized over the next 24 hours. It is a very, very dynamic, fluid situation. Nobody really knows what's going on. Nobody knows who sounded the gas alarm. Nobody knows if in there fact is any chemical or biological agents in the area.
But as you can tell, everyone is being extremely cautious.
Patients that are coming in, we're just now hearing rumors that four of them may in fact need immediate surgical care. We have given you a glimpse of that in the past, showing you exactly what this surgical suite here is capable of.
There are four patients here who may need to go straight to the operating room. Of course, we will continue to follow that along as they go in, if they go in. We'll see what kind of injuries there are, and you'll get a real sense of all that the FRSS is capable of doing right here in the desert. I want you to take a look around you, get a sense of the really austere conditions.
ZAHN: All right, we'll leave Sanjay there, as he describes a very intense situation now.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
