Trauma Commission Continues Work

The state’s trauma commission is still looking for ways to fund and improve Georgia’s trauma system. The group convened for another meeting Thursday.

Continuing to top the commission’s monthly agenda--trying to sustain a trauma system in dire need to support. The $23-million provided by the Legislature is less than half the amount given last year. It will be funded through fines collected from the new ‘super speeder’ law, going into effect July 1st.

But now, the early seeds of actually trying to build a network are being planted. A sliver of money is in-place for the early foundation of transfer centers. Commission member and vice president of trauma and emergency services for Children’s HealthCare of Atlanta, Linda Cole, says the centers would help reduce the system’s so-called ‘sea of chaos’:

"We do have excellent trauma care centers...we’ve got some very good EMS, but there’s very little infrastructure to bring them together. The transfer center is the first piece of bringing all those islands of excellence into a system."

Cole says the Commission is working with Georgia emergency management officials to use a newly-acquired $2-million federal grant to help fund these transfer centers.

Largest NIH grant in Georgia history

Four Atlanta-area universities and medical organizations are taking a share of a $31-million dollar federal grant. The money is from the National Institutes of Health. It’s going to a partnership of Emory University, the Morehouse School of Medicine, the Georgia Institute of Technology and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. The money is geared toward better translating lab discoveries into patient treatments.

Atlanta docs deliver baby on Delta flight

Two doctors from Atlanta hospitals successfully delivered a baby on a Delta Air Lines flight this week, airline and hospital officials said.

Flight 131, with 192 passengers was airborne from Munich, Germany to Atlanta on Wednesday when a woman about 32 to 36 weeks pregnant went into premature labor somewhere over Washington, DC. The flight made an emergency stopover in Charlotte, NC.

Dr. Robert Vincent, a pediatric cardiologist with Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and an adult cardiologist from Savannah, Ga. who The Savannah Morning News identified as Dr. Dieter K. Gunkel used medical equipment on the plane to resuscitate the child, who had turned blue with no heart rate.

The baby later was listed in good condition at a neonatal intensive care unit in Charlotte, said Jason Rollins, spokesman for the Atlanta-based pediatric hospital.

After the stopover in Charlotte, the flight continued to Atlanta, Talton said.

(AP)