White House announces resumption of medical assistance flights out of Haiti

Medical assistance flights from Haiti resuming

WASHINGTON — Officials are restarting the airlift out of Haiti carrying injured earthquake victims, the White House said Sunday.

In a statement, the White House said that having received assurances that additional medical capacity exists in the U.S. and among its international partners, “we determined that we can resume these critical flights.”

The U.S. military on Wednesday stopped carrying injured Haitians to the United States on its planes.

Since then, at least a handful of earthquake victims have made it to the U.S. on flights arranged by individual hospitals, and other flights continued carrying U.S. citizens and other mostly noninjured patients.

Late Sunday afternoon, the White House said that “the flights are on track to resume in the next 12 hours.

“Patients are being identified for transfer, doctors are making sure that it is safe for them to fly, and we are preparing specific in-flight pediatric care aboard the aircraft where needed,” said the statement by White House spokesman Tommy Vietor.

Vietor said Florida is identifying specific receiving facilities, and the government of Haiti has estimated that there are more than 200,000 injuries from the earthquake.