Capt. Michael Bryce, U.S. Public Health Service and Toby Clairmont, Team Commander, Hawaii Disaster Medical Assistance Team, describe a medical evacuation of an infant from American Samoa utilizing a cargo plane that was used to bring in disaster supplies.

DR-1859
FEMA
		
So what just happened here?
		
Capt. Michael Bryce, Regional Emergency Coordinator
U.S. Public Health Service		
The aircraft you see behind us taking off���Coast Guard C130���is headed back to Barber���s point with an infant that was on the island requiring some advanced surgery that���s not available here.  Tripler Army Hospital in Hawaii provided the opportunity to do surgery and care for the baby in order to fix the defect that was causing the lung problems.  Up to this point the baby has been intubated and on a ventilator for all of its 54 days.  So this should fix the problem.  It���s a problem that���s known to the physicians and pediatricians and Tripler, and there���s a very very good outlook for the child now.
		
Toby Clairmont, Team Commander 
Hawaii Disaster Medical Assistance Team		
Well, moving people, or what we call patient movement, in a disaster is not uncommon.  We learned that really beginning in Katrina, and we���ve been working for several years now to do a better job of it.  What makes this unique is not only is this child in the hospital for a protracted period of time with a relatively poor prognosis, but it was also a casualty of the disaster.  When the hospital had to be evacuated the child had to be taken up in the valley and was hand-bagged if you will for close to four to five hours under a person���s garage and then brought back to the hospital.  Condition has continued to diminish since that.  So we got our teams together���the Hawaii DMAT and DMAT Organ 2���and together we jointly crewed this aeronautical mission back to Honolulu.
		
		
These teams work very hard at training for response to events, and the crews on this aircraft have trained very hard to be flight medic and flight doc capable.  So this is an opportunity for them to exercise and pay back some of the effort that the government has put in to them, and they love doing this for the public.

Well, you know, the face of all this tragedy, you know, there���s been quite a few deaths��� 32 today��� it���s nice to be able to see one thing come out well.