Updated 01/21/2010 11:22 PM
NY1 In Haiti: Floating Hospital Nears Capacity
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As hopes of rescue begin to dim in Haiti, government officials and search teams are shifting their focus to keeping injured survivors alive and getting help to the millions left homeless.
Send aid to Haiti.
Among the many resources being used to treat victims of the magnitude 7 earthquake is the U.S. Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort.
It's currently anchored outside the capital city of Port-au-Prince.
The U.S. Navy is trying to increase the number of staff aboard the ship to help treat the injured.
Officials hope to add 350 crew members to the floating hospital along with more beds and operating rooms.
Troops have begun flying gravely injured Haitians to the ship, as relief workers warn that many are still dying from untreated injuries suffered in the quake.
The ship is close to its capacity of 150 patients, with more being flown in as soon as beds open up.
"We have helicopters waiting in the air, waiting for us to free up beds here in the department so we can get people down, so my job is to run around and make sure that happens," said Lieutenant Commander Dan Durora of the U.S. Navy.
Patients are facing up to 12-day waiting lists at clinics.
The organization, Doctors Without Borders, fears diarrhea and other diseases could break out in overcrowded camps.
Meanwhile, the Haitian government says it will soon resettle 400,000 survivors from Port-au-Prince to temporary camps on the outskirts of town.
The government is concerned about sanitary conditions in the hundreds of tent cities that have sprung up in the capital. Makeshift camps now house an estimated 500,000 people -- many of whom are in need of food, water and medical help.
Refugees in Port-au-Prince have been scrambling onto small rowboats, then ferried to larger boats to be taken to safer ground.
The Haitian government estimates the death toll at about 200,000. So far, about 80,000 have been buried in mass graves.