The funds will allow hospitals in the United States to receive federal reimbursement for treatment of the "rare patients with life-threatening conditions that cannot be handled within Haiti or by evacuation to another country," said USAID and the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Rajiv Shah, the newly-appointed administrator of USAID (the US Agency for International Development), said Washington was working "to ensure the well-being of the Haitian people is the foremost priority."

The first evacuation flight run by the US National Disaster Medical System was to leave Haiti as early as Tuesday.

The US military on Saturday said it had stopped medical evacuations of Haitians critically injured in the devastating January 12 earthquake that killed some 170,000 people, reportedly over a row over who would pay for their care.

HHS chief Kathleen Sebelius said the move to resume evacuations was "part of our larger strategy, working with the government of Haiti and our international partners, to help increase the capacity both inside Haiti, as well as in the United States and other countries, to help Haitians who need critical medical assistance."

US officials had said earlier that a first evacuation flight was to bring patients from Port-au-Prince to Tampa, Florida, on Monday.

The White House said in a statement that the United States was working "with the Haitian government and the international community to meet this urgent need and save lives."

The US aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, one of the first relief ships to arrive in the area after the quake, was meanwhile Monday released from its duties in Haiti, the Joint Task Force Haiti (JTFH) said in a statement.

Colonel Gregory Kane, the JTFH operations officer, insisted in a briefing to reporters here that the carrier's departure would "absolutely not" affect US relief operations in the country.

From its position anchored just offshore from the devastated Haitian capital, supply missions from the Vinson distributed "more than 1.1 million pounds of emergency humanitarian aid for earthquake survivors in Haiti," the task force said.

Over 400 Haitians injured in the earthquake have been treated by medical teams onboard the ship, Kane told AFP earlier, and there have been over 4,000 helicopter sorties -- dropping supplies and evacuating or transporting personnel -- between the Vinson and the mainland.

"A lot of (the carrier's) capacity has been eclipsed by other assets that have now moved into Haiti," Kane told AFP outside the US embassy here.

"That's not to say they can't still contribute" to the relief effort, Kane added, noting that 10 of the Vinson's helicopters had been relocated to other naval ships and the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"From emergency medical care aboard ships, to medical evacuation missions, to the rapid delivery of urgently-needed supplies, (Vinson personnel) helped save countless lives in the most desperate of times," US Southern Command Commander General Douglas Fraser said in a statement lauding the carrier's efforts.

Since the earthquake, the US military has deployed 20,000 military personnel, 23 ships and more than 90 aircraft to Haiti to help deliver aid and emergency medical care to survivors of the quake, he said.

From Monday, US officials said the number of ships supporting the effort had been reduced to 19 military and coast guard, but that seven additional US military and civilian ships were en route to the region.

The US government's Joint Information Center (JIC) said later Monday that some 300 Haitians injured in the earthquake and treated on a US Navy hospital ship would be transferred to a clinic called "Love A Child Village" -- supported by a US Christian organization -- north of Port-au-Prince.

"The movement of post-operative patients to this facility opens space for Haitians still in need of urgent care" to be treated on the Comfort shore anchored just offshore, JIC said in a statement.

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