20 October 2005

TO:                  All Commissioned Corps Officers

FROM:            United States Surgeon General

Subject:          Update on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Response

Hurricane Wilma has our watchful eye as we continue our efforts in the Gulf States Region.  Of course, we hope the storm will diminish before making landfall but the weather experts and hurricane hunters are predicting less hopeful news.  Nonetheless, the Corps remains ready and prepared for action.

Although we read less and less about the aftermath and response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the news these days, I assure you our PHS officers remain on the ground working diligently to assist in a myriad of efforts.  Another group of officers you may not have heard much about are those deployed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).   I’d like to share some of the information on their work in this letter.

More than fifty percent of CDC’s Commissioned Corps Officers have been deployed supporting the Hurricane Katrina/Rita response in nearly 20 missions.   So many have deployed that for the first time ever CDC established a Readiness Coordination Desk.  This staff ensured coordination with the Office of Force Readiness and Deployment to avoid duplication of efforts.

Commissioned officers from CDC staffed shelters across Texas, Arkansas and the entire affected area. They were assigned to the Strategic National Stockpile setting up the Federal Medical Shelters. They have been, and are, working with local health officials and OSHA representatives. Their epidemiological surveillance team worked with the State of Louisiana and all parties concerned to successfully track down cases of TB. Their environmental health officers have assisted EPA inspectors. They have given guidance to clinicians and to public health experts across the Gulf Coast Region.

CAPT Ali Khan led the CDC’s efforts in support of the greater New Orleans area. He notes their main missions were to support critical public health functions for the relief workers and the residential citizens, re-establish essential functions for the returning population and lay a framework for an integrated public health system.  CAPT Khan and his team created multiple platforms to work together with all of the recovery stakeholders to help restore the public health infrastructure.

He reports, “People wanted to come and work. We basically functioned as the local health department. We had to provide so much for a city that was ripped apart. When we arrived there was no electricity, no running water, nothing. I stood in awe of PHS and civilian colleagues who, after traveling more than 24 hours to get to New Orleans and finding no toilets, no lights, were wondering what in the world they were going to do. Yet within 48 hours they had transformed the place and we were collecting health data and performing our public health duties.  I can’t express enough how proud I am of the officers. They truly exemplify what it means to be Commissioned Corps. I ended our daily briefing with “back to the frontlines of public health.” They and their civil service colleagues in the trenches were integral to this recovery effort.”

CAPT Khan and his colleagues have been doing their part to assist with the recovery efforts in Louisiana.  As a Department, our efforts will continue throughout the Gulf States Region, probably for some time.  With regard to Corps activities, we are starting to discuss with state and local health authorities the transition to other resources to maintain and rebuild the public health infrastructure.  These are complex discussions, there has been so much damage and there are so few local sources from which to obtain and sustain necessary health systems, that the path forward is at best uncertain.

Many of you did not have the opportunity to deploy as part of the hurricane response.  You remained in your clinics or at your desk and carried out important, if not critically essential, public health functions.  There may be the misconception out there that your service was somehow not valued as much as those who deployed.  Let me dispel that myth.  We are a Corps, and it is the sum of all our parts that makes us truly great.  Those in the field could not be in the field without the support of their colleagues in the agencies.  These officers and civil service employees stayed the course within their agencies so that we could mount one of the most incredible responses in our history.  The achievements of the Corps in this response touch all of us, and we thank all those officers who have and will do their part in this continuing effort.

Above all we are a team, we are the Corps.  Though these are times that try us and challenge us - my faith in your steadfastness and dedication is unwavering. Carry on!

Richard H. Carmona, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.S.

VADM, USPHS