Just back from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the state's top disease specialist said the medical assistance team he worked with treated 1,003 patients in nine days in Louisiana.

Dr. Paul Effler, the state epidemiologist, volunteered as part of a disaster medical assistance team. Although other Hawai'i health professionals also are helping out in the Gulf Coast, Effler ended up part of an Ohio team that needed another doctor ready to go.

Effler said he took leave from his state job to be part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency effort. He was based at Covington High School outside of New Orleans, which had been designated as a special-needs shelter because emergency power was available there.

He said those they cared for included patients from two nursing homes, a hospice, home-care patients, as well as people injured in the storm. "It was a very wide spread of clinical care responsibilities and at times quite challenging," he said.

Effler said the patients they treated suffered from a variety of ailments and injuries, ranging from cuts and bruises to dog bites and infections. There were also chronically ill people whose conditions got worse without the daily care they needed.

He said his impression was that many of those they treated were poor. "Many of them communicated to me that they had lost everything, their houses, their business, they had no identification and no money," he said.

Effler said there is a lot to learn from any disaster response and especially one of this magnitude.

"I guess I hadn't fully appreciated the need for nursing homes and how to address them in a crisis like this and especially the homebound medically fragile," he said.

This emergency focused his attention on people who don't always come to mind as victims of a storm and its aftermath.

Effler said those involved can analyze what's been done and improve responses by treating this emergency as a heads-up. In Hawai'i, "we need to redouble our efforts," he said.

He said state Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino plans to put together a conference focusing on lessons learned featuring those who responded.

Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo said nine state mental-health specialists left Sunday to assist hurricane victims. She said the team included social workers, psychiatrists and psychologists who traveled to Houston and Montgomery, Ala.

She said the other medical assistance team members are scheduled to return this week.

Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.