News Roundup

Officials Demand Opening of Charity

NEW ORLEANS —The fight to reopen Charity Hospital in downtown New Orleans will be taken to the steps of the facility Friday.

Elected officials, medical staff, residents, social service providers and former patients plan to hold a press conference at 2 p.m. in front of the hospital at 1532 Tulane Ave. calling for its immediate reopening. Charity has been closed since Hurricane Katrina damaged the facility.

Confirmed speakers include state Rep. Kenneth Odinet, D-Madisonville; New Orleans City Councilwoman Shelley Midura; James Moises, a former Charity Hospital Emergency Department physician; and K. Brad Ott, a member of the Region 1 Health Care Consortium and a Charity outpatient.

Odinet is an author of state House Concurrent Resolution 89, a measure from the 2006 regular session of the Legislature that calls for the reopening of Charity and an independent architectural and engineering evaluation.

Midura was the lead author of a unanimously passed May 17 City Council motion to reopen Charity and investigate its closure.

Moises has said the the first three floors of the hospital could be reopened in months. Following Katrina, Moises and a team of nearly 200 doctors, nurses and military personnel spent a month cleaning and decontaminating the first three floors of the hospital, intent on returning at least a portion of it to operational status.

The press conference will call for the full implementation of HCR 89, which demands the reopening of Charity on an interim basis until a replacement facility is opened.

Moises said Louisiana State University Health Care Service Division officials and Gov. Kathleeen Babineaux Blanco’s administration have thwarted the implementation of HCR 89.

The Committee for the Reopening of Charity Hospital is sponsoring the press conference.