Charity Hospital

Charity Hospital is one of the hospitals in New Orleans that may be scuttled because of Hurricane Katrina-related damage. The decision to do so now is controversial, says blogger Concerned for Charity:

My position is that Charity may very well need to be torn down or significantly remodeled, in the near future. However, in the near term people must provide effective and efficient medical services.

The initial post of the "Concerned for Charity Hospital" blog shows photos of apparently unscathed parts of the hospital, and states:

Note Charity's basement was drained on September 14, 2005 by the USS Iwa Jima's damage control team. As for the asbestos in the basement of the building, the basement can be sealed off from the rest of the building in the short term allowing for people to be cared for in the building. Instead according to WWLTV the tent hospitals might be moved from the Convention Center to Grocery Stores. The Blanco administration will not even attempt to do what is right for the people of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana. Remember 70% of the doctors who chose to stay after graduation in Louisiana trained at Charity can we as state afford to loose this resource. As the state of health care in New Orleans so goes the state, too many of our professionals train there state wide.
This is state resource, when FEMA turns down a full buyout of the hospital what does Blanco's administration do it moves into the most vulnerable of the two state hospitals in New Orleans to flooding. This is a typical Louisiana temper tantrum you don t get your way so you deny services and tell the feds you need more money.

The blog refers to the Times Picayune article "Building repairs ranked by urgency," 2/6/06, which leads,

Prisons outrank charity hospitals, and repairing the Superdome is more urgent than fixing university buildings, according to a list that ranks the state's priorities for repairing government property damaged by Hurricane Katrina.