Allegations of Mercy Killing in Hurricane Aftermath

The Louisiana attorney general is investigating claims that staff at a New Orleans hospital may have engaged in mercy killings of frail patients in the days after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city and conditions in the facility deteriorated.

The office is focusing on the activities at the Memorial Medical Centre - where more than 30 patients died during the hurricane and its aftermath - as well as looking at 13 nursing homes and five other hospitals as part of a larger investigation, a spokeswoman for the attorney general, Charles Foti, told Reuters yesterday. The nursing home allegations are thought to relate to neglect.

Witnesses have said conditions at Memorial quickly deteriorated as temperatures soared above 38C (100F) and the sanitation system broke down. There was no water or power for days and staff had to operate respirators manually after the hospital's emergency generators were flooded. The attorney general has ordered autopsies of 45 bodies removed from the hospital after the storm. Of those, 11 died before Katrina and were being held in the hospital's morgue, but most of the remaining 34 people were patients in a long-term care unit at the hospital.

The investigation has been stepped up since a doctor who was at Memorial during the hurricane told CNN that discussions of euthanasia had taken place at the hospital, although he never saw it performed.

Dr Bryant King told CNN that a few doctors and hospital administrators debated the issue as they tried to evacuate nearly 2,000 patients and family members from the facility in the three days following the storm.