"Forty-five bodies have been found at a hospital that was abandoned more than a week ago after it was surrounded by floodwaters unleashed by Hurricane Katrina, a state health official said Monday.
The bodies were located Sunday at Memorial Medical Center, said Bob Johannesen, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Hospitals. Johannesen said the bodies were those of patients, but he had no other information.
The Louisiana death toll rose to 279 on Monday, up from 197 on Sunday, Johannesen said.
On Sunday, reporters were kept at a distance from Memorial Medical by law enforcement officers as workers removed bodies from the hospital, situated in the city's Uptown section.
The 317-bed hospital, owned by TenetHealthcare Corp., remained closed Monday and was still partially surrounded by floodwaters."
Aparently, many might have died from their own doctors.
Via Newsmax:
"Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leave them behind to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals, according to a shocking report in the respected British newspaper the Daily Mail.
One emergency official who spoke on the record, William "Forest" McQueen, told the Mail: "Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die."
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McQueen, a utility manager for the town of Abita Springs near New Orleans, told relatives that patients had been "put down," saying medical personnel "injected them, but nurses stayed with them until they died."
The Mail did not name the other members of the medical staff interviewed by the newspaper in order to protect their identities. Euthanasia is illegal in Louisiana.
One doctor said: "I didn't know if I was doing the right thing. But I did not have time. I had to make snap decisions, under the most appalling circumstances, and I did what I thought was right.
"I injected morphine into those patients who were dying and in agony. If the first dose was not enough, I gave a double dose. And at night I prayed to God to have mercy on my soul.
"This was not murder. This was compassion. I had cancer patients who were in agony."
One could only imagine the agnony of these Doctors faced with this decision, no doubt more "horror stories" to come.
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