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Transit Strike Takes Grim Toll on Blood Collection; Katrina Investigation into Hospital Deaths

Aired December 22, 2005 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, you've heard the staggering dollar amounts New York City and the transit union, and striking workers and city businesses have been using since the walkout began. But a lot more than dollars have dr dried up. The New York Blood Center says it's gotten barely half its regular donations. Linda Levi joins me to talk about that.
Linda, where is the -- I was reading that a state of emergency has been called. Tell me exactly where the emergency lies.

LINDA LEVI, NEW YORK BLOOD CENTER: Well, in all of the boroughs of New York City, we've lost, if not at all, nearly every drive that's been scheduled since Tuesday. That amount to 500, 750 pints of blood each day that we're not able to collect. Our total collection goal each day is 2,000. So that's quite a hefty percentage that we've not been able to collect. So we're very concerned about the health of the New York/New Jersey community without these donations.

PHILLIPS: So it's workers not able to get to work and it's regular donations that are not able to happen, right, it's a combination of both?

LEVI: It's a combination of both. As I said, organization, business, school have been canceling blood drives because their employees, their constituents can't get to work, and even people who normally would make an individual donation to one of our permanent locations, they're obviously having a difficult time getting to those locations. What we're trying to do is encourage them to get there if they can, to reschedule their appointment as quickly as they can or consider donating in our suburban locations throughout Long Island, New Jersey and Hudson Valley region.

Because really, without an adequate blood supply it puts the community health at risk, and we don't want that to happen.

PHILLIPS: When you're talking about platelets, it's all about a fresh donation, right, because they expire how quickly?

LEVI: That's correct. Platelets have a very, very short shelf life of five days. And we need fresh platelets donated each and every day. Right now, we're trying to bring in platelets from other parts of the United States, because we need them for burn victims, cancer patients, burn victims, so many people who need platelets every single day.

The same problem we're having red cells of the RH negative type. We're trying to bring those in from other part of country. But the supply right now is very, very limited around the rest of the country. So it's become critical that we get people to donate locally.

PHILLIPS: You mention platelets, the RH negative type. What type of patients, individuals, desperately need that type of donation?

LEVI: Well, as I said, platelets are used primarily by cancer patients, burn victims. RH negative, it depends; if that's your blood type, you need that type.

But the bottom line is, and I think people aren't really aware of this, that somewhere in the nation, every three seconds, someone needs a life-saving transfusion. It's generally not planned for. It's the newborn baby, the mom delivering the baby, an accident victim, surgery patient. So many people need blood each and every day. But without volunteers donating blood, there really is no community blood supply. So we understand the hardships and we understand there's a lot of economic implications to the strike, but what we're talk about is really the health of our community.

PHILLIPS: Well, what's interesting is that when we sort of started talking about this, I think everybody in the meeting said, oh, my gosh, what an interesting angle, because you're thinking about all the businesses that are having problems from the restaurants to the dry cleaners. We've been talking so much about that and talking so much about the workers, we never even thought about something like the blood supply could be in trouble.

Are you looking -- I mean, is it immediate? Because it has been only a few days? Or are you just looking at what's happening day by day, and thinking, oh my gosh, if that lasts another five days we are in big trouble?

LEVI: Well, it's really both. What people don't know about blood or realize -- I think they do know it instinctively, but most people don't think about it, is blood is perishable. Even the red cells last a maxim of 42 days. You really need a fresh supply of blood each and every day, as what we had a few days ago or few weeks ago begins to expire. So you really need fresh donations every day.

And this is a day-to-day problem, and it's a bit more of a longer-term problem around the holidays in general. The strike has only complicated it.

PHILLIPS: Let me ask you this, with the platelets, you said that those type of donations, the fresh donations, it only lasts about five days. So let's say you had enough fresh donations, but this strike took place. Have you not been able to transport those fresh donations? Have you lost a lot of the fresh platelet donations that happened prior to the strike?

LEVI: No, the good news is from a transportation perspective, we've done a wonderful job. All of our employees for the most part are getting to work, either carpooling on their own, or we have some very early morning van pickups for critical personnel. And our drivers of course can get through with their deliveries because we're in, you know, specially marked vehicles.

The problem is we need donors to come in to ensure we have product to deliver. We don't have enough platelet appointments scheduled as we get closer to the holidays. We were hoping to pick up that pace, if you will, that week, and then the strike occurred. So it really has just complicated a situation that wasn't great to begin with, but it's made it much more devastating.

PHILLIPS: All right, how can we help? What can we say now? you're saying it would be great if people in the suburbs would get out and donate. What else? What else can we do?

LEVI: Absolutely. Well, I would suggest they call our 800 number, that's 800-933-BLOOD, or go to our Web site, which is nybloodcenter.org, and that way they can find out the most convenient location to their home and schedule an appointment right away.

PHILLIPS: Once again, nybloodcenter.org. 1-800-933-blood.

Linda Levi, thanks for your time.

LEVI: Thank you very much.

PHILLIPS: Our pleasure.

Our live coverage of the transit strike will continue all afternoon. 3:00 p.m. Eastern, New York Governor Pataki will join me live.

Still to come on LIVE FROM, New Orleans in the days after Katrina. The city was desperate and dangerous, but were sick people deliberately killed by those sworn to care for them? The latest on the investigation you'll see only on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Now, new allegations on CNN's continuing investigation into whether medical professionals may have resorted to euthanasia at a New Orleans hospital in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. You'll recall after the storm, there were more than 100 deaths at the New Orleans-area hospitals and nursing homes. Louisiana authorities are investigating all of them.

One investigation is focused on allegations that patients were intentionally killed at New Orleans Memorial Hospital. And now CNN has learned more than one medical professional is under scrutiny as a possible person of interests in that investigation.

CNN's Drew Griffin filed this exclusive report for "PAULA ZAHN NOW." You'll see it only on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti has told, CNN allegations of possible euthanasia at New Orleans Memorial Hospital are, quote, "credible and worth investigating," end quote. But that is all he will say.

And while Foti will not provide any details of his investigation, a source familiar with it, who did not want to be identified publicly, told CNN that more than one person is being actively scrutinized as a possible person of interest for crimes related to euthanasia there.

(on camera): If it happened, why would people trained to save lives suddenly and deliberately end them? CNN has learned, the investigation is focusing on the possibility that medical personnel inside this hospital were afraid, afraid of the anarchy surrounding the city, afraid that they would be the next targets of violence, and that they were simply tired of the horrendous conditions inside.

(voice-over): On Thursday morning, four days after Katrina, medical staffers say evacuations were still unpredictable. The patients who were left were primarily bedridden, not necessarily near death, several sources told us, just difficult to evacuate.

Thirty-three-year-old chef David Matherne was inside the hospital with his sick father during Katrina. He stayed to help evacuate patients. On Thursday, he says, the inconvenience and fear came to a breaking point, and the mood inside Memorial changed.

DAVID MATHERNE, MEMORIAL HOSPITAL VOLUNTEER: Between the volunteers and the staff, a big mood had changed. It was, we are getting out, come hell or high water, today.

GRIFFIN (on camera): Thursday?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thursday. It was like, no. Done. We're getting out.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): During the storm, Memorial Hospital was a refuge for as many as 2,000 people, patients, staff and their families. But, by Thursday, despair was setting in. The hospital was surrounded by floodwater. There was no power, no water. And the heat was stifling.

Nurses had to fan patients by hand. And, outside the hospital windows, nurses tell CNN they saw looters breaking into this credit union. Up on the seventh floor, Angela McManus was with her critically ill mother. Thursday, she noticed a change, too. Nurses, she says, were now discussing, for the first time, which patients would have to stay behind.

ANGELA MCMANUS, MOTHER DIED AT MEMORIAL HOSPITAL: I mean, these were grown men that were buckling down to their knees, because they were like, they couldn't believe that FEMA was making them stay there and watch the people die. They had decided not to evacuate the DNR patients.

GRIFFIN (on camera): That's when you heard for the first time...

MCMANUS: Right.

GRIFFIN: ... your mom was not going to get out. MCMANUS: The first time.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): Angela McManus's had a DNR, a do-not- resuscitate order, but was alert. Her daughter says Wilda (ph) McManus did not make it out. She wants to believe her mother died peacefully from her illness, but now doesn't know.

On her death certificate lists the first cause of death merely as hurricane-related.

MCMANUS: I think she died from the infection. I don't know. I really don't know. And, you know, hearing -- this doctor was saying about euthanasia -- euthanasia at the hospital, I just don't know where to go.

GRIFFIN: That doctor is Dr. Bryant King, who was a contract physician at Memorial. In October, he told CNN, in an exclusive interview, doctors and nurses had openly discussed putting patients out of their misery. Now Dr. Bryant King has given us details about what he saw.

On the morning of Thursday, September 1, King says a doctor approached him, saying a hospital administrator wanted to know what he thought about putting patients out of their misery. He thought it was just talk. Then, three hours later, on the second floor, around noon, Dr. Bryant King says the area where the remaining patients were housed became eerily silent.

DR. BRYANT KING, FORMER CONTRACT PHYSICIAN AT MEMORIAL HOSPITAL: ... and realized, there were no more fanners; there were no more nurses adminis -- checking blood sugars or blood pressures. They were all pushed out.

And then there were -- there were people standing at the -- the -- the ramp at the Claire (ph) garage. There were people standing over by where the morgue were -- the chapel that we were using as the morgue. There were people standing at the entrance way to where the -- the -- the emergency room led up to the second-floor area.

So, it was kind of just being blocked off. And that didn't make sense to me. It didn't make sense why would we stop what we had been doing, especially given the fact that we are evacuating patients.

GRIFFIN: Dr. King said another hospital administrator asked if he and two other remaining doctors should pray. King says, one of those doctors, Dr. Anna Pou, had a handful of syringes.

B. KING: This is on the second floor in the lobby. This -- and across that walkway, there's a group of patients. And Anna is standing over there with a handful of syringes.

GRIFFIN (on camera): Dr. Anna Pou.

B. KING: Talking to a patient. And the -- the words that I heard her say were, "I'm going to give you something to make you feel better." And she had a handful of syringes. I don't -- and that was strange on a lot of -- on a lot of different levels. For one, we don't give medications. The nurses give medications. We almost never give medications ourselves, unless it's something critical. It's in the middle of a code or -- even in the middle of a code, the nurses give medications.

Nobody -- nobody walks around with a handful of syringes and goes and gives the same thing to each patient. That -- that's just not how we do it.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): Dr. King had no way of knowing what was in those syringes. He left the hospital. He says he personally did not witness any acts of euthanasia.

Right after evacuating Memorial Hospital, Dr. Anna Pou had this to say to a Baton Rouge television station.

DR. ANNA POU, MEMORIAL HOSPITAL PHYSICIAN: There were some patients there that -- who were critically ill, and, regardless of the storm, were -- had the orders of, do not resuscitate, in other words, that if they died, to allow them to die naturally and not to use any heroic methods to resuscitate them.

We all did everything within our power to give the best treatment that we could to the patients in the hospital, to make them comfortable.

GRIFFIN: Dr. Pou talked to CNN in several phone calls in the days after the evacuation. She would not comment on the euthanasia allegations and has since hired an attorney.

Dr. Pou's attorney, Rick Simmons (ph), sent this statement to CNN on behalf of his client.

It reads: "The physicians and staff responsible for the care of patients, many of whom were gravely ill, faced loss of generator power, the absence of routine medical equipment to sustain life, lack of water and sanitation facilities, extreme heat, in excess of 100 degrees, all occurring," says the statement, "in an environment of deteriorating security, apparent social unrest, and the absence of governmental authority.

Dr. Pou and other medical personnel," it reads, "at Memorial Hospital worked tirelessly for five days to save and evacuate patients, none of whom were abandoned. We feel confident that the facts will reveal heroic efforts by the physicians and the staff in a desperate situation."

As part of its investigation, the attorney general's office has sent tissue samples of the bodies recovered from Memorial to a private lab for testing. The Orleans parish coroner, Frank Minyard, confirms to CNN, one of the tests is to determine if fatal doses of the painkiller morphine were in the bodies of any of the dead. How many deaths might be involved is still under investigation.

But David Matherne, who was helping with the evacuations, says patient body counts and patient evacuees were not adding up.

MATHERNE: I have been on the roof. I have been downstairs. I have been everywhere. So, I'm pretty tired at this point. And I hear a stretcher count. And they are, like, OK, we have got 22 left inside. I'm like, cool. We didn't take 22 people out, though. We didn't take 22 people upstairs. I know that. It's -- what happened? I don't know.

GRIFFIN: Matherne says he did not see anything, but he suspects that something wrong happened.

Dr. Bryant King says that, while he knows there were people already dead of natural causes at Memorial, the final number of deaths does not make sense to him either.

B. KING: We went from somewhere in the teens on one day to over 40 dead bodies the next day. And the numbers just didn't add up to me. They really did not add up.

GRIFFIN: King says he regret he's didn't stay, didn't protect the patients who were left, and is haunted, he says, that colleagues he worked with to save lives may have taken them.

B. KING: The way -- the fabric of what we are -- what we are built on just kind of crumbled. And it's scary to think that it takes three days, three or four days, and people aren't people that they used to be. And that's scary.

GRIFFIN (on camera): There are two companies that handle patient care at Memorial Hospital. Tenet runs the hospital and Life Care of New Orleans leases space on the seventh floor to care for long-term patients. Both of those companies have declined comment, citing the ongoing investigation. But both say that the employees that they hire acted heroically under terrible circumstances and both say they are cooperating fully with the attorney general's investigation.

Drew Griffin, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: And make sure to join Paula weeknights 8:00 Eastern, 5:00 Pacific. Later this evening on CNN...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Strange voices, stop! The whole floor is shaking underneath me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Astounding images and horrible sounds of hurricane floodwaters as Katrina trashed the Gulf coast. Hear from the man who shot this video and why he's still fighting to get back what he lost. We have that story in "THE SITUATION ROOM," 7:00 p.m. Eastern, and again at 10:00 p.m. on "ANDERSON COOPER 360." A worker makes an incredible discovery, finding not one but two babies. A Christmas present this church congregation never expected. The custodian who found them and the woman who's caring for them, next.

LIVE FROM has all the news you need this afternoon. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well, now a story that's heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time.

These twins, only a couple of days old, were found abandoned just inside of North Austin Lutheran Church on Chicago's west side. The babies were taken to a hospital where staff members have already named them. Guess what the names are? The baby boy, baby Joseph. And the little girl, baby Mary. The church's custodian found them yesterday morning. This is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KENNETH GREEN, CHURCH CUSTODIAN: Going up the stairs, I come in, I heard the baby make a little noise. And I found the babies right here. One of those babies made a little noise (inaudible).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Well, Kenneth Green and a secretary there at the church took the babies next door to Doris Holden. She's the director of the North Austin Head Start school. It was a discovery that literally left her in tears.

Kenneth Green and Doris Holden join me both live from Chicago.

Thanks so much for being with us.

And I know you're actually right there in that stairwell.

Kenneth, you and I were talking about how this all happened. Kind of show me where you are, where you were working and how you came across these babies.

GREEN: Well, I was coming around, you know, to check the church, as I was walking around. So I come up the stairs. And one of the babies made a little noise to me. And I found the babies sitting right here. And so I picked it up.

I thought it was just one baby in there. But when I take them downstairs, I found there was two in there.

PHILLIPS: Oh, my gosh.

GREEN: So, just...

PHILLIPS: Were they in a basket? Were they in a -- what were they in, Kenneth?

GREEN: There was like a little baby seat.

PHILLIPS: Really? And just kind of one on top of each other?

GREEN: No, they were side by side.

PHILLIPS: And so when you saw them, did you think -- did you look around and think, OK, did somebody forget their babies, or did you think it was a little strange? What was going through your head?

GREEN: No. Well, I don't -- like somehow -- I don't know what I was thinking, I just saw the babies and so I just took them downstairs. And we called the people to come take them out and that, you know, as far as I can get with them.

PHILLIPS: Were they crying?

GREEN: No.

PHILLIPS: No? They were quiet?

GREEN: No, they was not, no.

PHILLIPS: Did you start talking to them?

(LAUGHTER)

GREEN: No. I didn't say nothing. Just -- no, I didn't, no.

PHILLIPS: Did you hold them? Did you comfort them for a minute?

GREEN: No. I just took them and I gave them to the secretary. She took them down and they called 911. That was it.

PHILLIPS: Wow. All right.

So, Kenneth, you brought them actually to Doris' secretary.

Doris, were you there when Kenneth walked in with these babies?

DORIS HOLDEN, DIR., NORTH AUSTIN HEAD START: Yes, I was actually in another room when they both brought the babies over to me and I thought they were really joking around when they said they had a Christmas present for me.

PHILLIPS: So, Kenneth, you walked in and said, "I've got a Christmas present for you"?

GREEN: Yes, I did, yes.

PHILLIPS: And, Doris, you walked out. You thought they were joking. What did you do when you saw these babies?

HOLDEN: Well, I looked at the expression on my secretary's face and I -- you know, I just knew right then that it was -- she was very serious. So we set the babies down on the table and we pulled off the receiving blankets and we found there were twins in there.

PHILLIPS: And was there a note? Any type of letter, anything that could tell you...

HOLDEN: There was nothing.

PHILLIPS: Nothing?

HOLDEN: No. No note, letter, nothing at all.

PHILLIPS: Now, I'm taking it this is probably the first time the two of you have ever encountered something like this.

HOLDEN: Yes. It was pretty emotional.

The staff that was there, we were all crying and we checked the babies out because we're all certified in infantile first aid and CPR. So we felt the babies' heads, and the vital signs were good, and then that's when I called 911.

PHILLIPS: Wow.

So, now what happens with the twins? Where are they now? And will they -- is it possible that someone watching this segment could adopt these kids or do you have to try and find the biological parents first? What happens next?

HOLDEN: Well, they're at West Suburban Hospital right now and the police are investigating, trying to find out the whereabouts of the biological parents.

PHILLIPS: What if you can't find them?

HOLDEN: Well, I hear there's a lot of phone calls and inquiries, you know, to -- you know, people wishing to adopt the children.

PHILLIPS: Kenneth, you've got a 19-year-old. What do you think? Could you be a dad again of two little twins?

GREEN: No.

(LAUGHTER)

I think I'm going to let that alone. I'm going to leave it alone.

PHILLIPS: I don't blame you.

GREEN: Yes.

PHILLIPS: Well, it's heroic what you did, Kenneth.

GREEN: Pardon me?

PHILLIPS: I said it's heroic what you did, you're quite a hero, Kenneth. GREEN: Oh, well, OK.

PHILLIPS: Humble, humble. That's all right. We like it humble.

Kenneth Green, Doris Holden, we'll keep track of little baby Joseph and baby Mary. Thank you so much for being with us.

HOLDEN: Thank you.

GREEN: Yes, thank you.

HOLDEN: You're welcome.

PHILLIPS: Well, the news keeps coming. We'll keep bringing it to you.

More LIVE FROM right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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