Helping the Earthquake Victims in Haiti
Tuesday January 19, 2010
The catastrophic earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, continues to take its toll. The Haitian government has announced that 70,000 burials (most in mass graves) have been confirmed, and estimates that as many as 200,000 people may have died.
Conditions in Haiti even under the best of circumstances are terrible. Fresh water and fuel are often not available, and as many as two million Haitians live as squatters in ramshackle structures that aren't built to last (most of which did not make it through the quake).
The Catholic bishops of the United States asked all the parishes in the country to take up a second collection this past weekend to be used to provide food, water, medical care, and shelter for those Haitians left homeless by the earthquake. Most dioceses will funnel that money through Catholic Relief Services, the official relief agency of the Catholic Church in the United States.
If you would like to make a donation, a good place to start is my list of Catholic relief agencies. You can find the website of each agency by clicking on its name in the list, and all of them have special appeals focusing on Haiti on the front pages of their websites.
You might also consider making a donation directly to the Salesian Missions. The Salesians of Don Bosco have long dedicated themselves to helping the poor of Haiti, and most of their buildings in Haiti have collapsed (and one Salesian missionary was killed). Donations to the Salesians will not only help suffering Haitians but also help the Salesians remain in Haiti after others have left.
Sacan más de 70 con vida en Haití
| 2010-01-18 | El Diario NY
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Rescatistas brasileños buscaban a sobrevivientes ayer de entre los escombros de la sede de la misión de las Naciones Unidas en la capital, Puerto Príncipe. (FOTO: ap) ap
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Rescatistas de Nueva York salvan a cuatro
Ya hay más de 100,000 muertos
El 60% de zonas afectadas por el terremoto han sido ya rastreadas por rescatistas
PUERTO PRINCIPE/AP — Los 43 equipos de todo el mundo que buscan sobrevivientes del terremoto del martes en la capital haitiana han logrado rescatar con vida a más de 70 personas, dijo una vocera de Naciones Unidas, incluida la propietaria de un hotel que fue extraída de los escombros con vida la madrugada de ayer.
En Ginebra, la portavoz de la ONU, Elizabeth Byrs, dijo ayer que la incidencia de éxitos es inusualmente alta para una operación de búsqueda coordinada por la ONU, incluso si parece pequeña ante la escala del desastre.
Byrs dijo que la moral es muy elevada entre los más de 1,739 rescatistas que recorren los escombros sin parar, cinco días después que el país caribeño fuera sacudido por un sismo de magnitud 7. Agregó que sigue habiendo personas vivas entre los edificios derruidos y que podrían vivir seis días en esas condiciones.
"Sigue habiendo gente con vida", dijo Byrs. "Sigue habiendo esperanza". Según ella, unos 43 equipos ayudados por 161 perros rastreadores se encuentran en el lugar y más llegarán en breve.
Uno de los principales temores surgidos ayer fue el rápido descenso del combustible para vehículos y las Naciones Unidas se afanaban por encontrar nuevas fuentes, dijo la vocera.
Sin embargo, hubo momentos de alegría: un equipo estadounidense rescató con vida a una mujer entre los escombros de un edificio universitario derruido donde estuvo atrapada durante 97 horas. Poco antes del amanecer, otro equipo rescató a tres sobrevivientes entre los escombros de un supermercado.
| 2010-01-18 | El Diario NY
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Rescatistas brasileños buscaban a sobrevivientes ayer de entre los escombros de la sede de la misión de las Naciones Unidas en la capital, Puerto Príncipe. (FOTO: ap) ap
1/2
Rescatistas de Nueva York salvan a cuatro
Ya hay más de 100,000 muertos
El 60% de zonas afectadas por el terremoto han sido ya rastreadas por rescatistas
PUERTO PRINCIPE/AP — Los 43 equipos de todo el mundo que buscan sobrevivientes del terremoto del martes en la capital haitiana han logrado rescatar con vida a más de 70 personas, dijo una vocera de Naciones Unidas, incluida la propietaria de un hotel que fue extraída de los escombros con vida la madrugada de ayer.
En Ginebra, la portavoz de la ONU, Elizabeth Byrs, dijo ayer que la incidencia de éxitos es inusualmente alta para una operación de búsqueda coordinada por la ONU, incluso si parece pequeña ante la escala del desastre.
Byrs dijo que la moral es muy elevada entre los más de 1,739 rescatistas que recorren los escombros sin parar, cinco días después que el país caribeño fuera sacudido por un sismo de magnitud 7. Agregó que sigue habiendo personas vivas entre los edificios derruidos y que podrían vivir seis días en esas condiciones.
"Sigue habiendo gente con vida", dijo Byrs. "Sigue habiendo esperanza". Según ella, unos 43 equipos ayudados por 161 perros rastreadores se encuentran en el lugar y más llegarán en breve.
Uno de los principales temores surgidos ayer fue el rápido descenso del combustible para vehículos y las Naciones Unidas se afanaban por encontrar nuevas fuentes, dijo la vocera.
Sin embargo, hubo momentos de alegría: un equipo estadounidense rescató con vida a una mujer entre los escombros de un edificio universitario derruido donde estuvo atrapada durante 97 horas. Poco antes del amanecer, otro equipo rescató a tres sobrevivientes entre los escombros de un supermercado.
La madrugada del domingo, socorristas rescataron a Nadine Cardoso, dueña del destruido Hotel Montana, de 62 años, deshidratada pero sin lesiones. Entre los aplausos de la gente, la bajaron en camilla con una cuerda por sobre una montaña de escombros, doce horas después de haberla encontrado. "Es un pequeño milagro, ella es una mujer dura. Es indestructible", dijo su esposo Reinhard Riedl al enterarse de que estaba viva.
La ONU perdió al menos a 40 empleados, incluidos el jefe de misión tunecino Hedi Annabi y el subjefe brasileño Luiz Carlos da Costa, y cientos seguían desaparecidos. "Esta es la pérdida más grave y más grande en la historia de nuestra organización", dijo Ban.
La Brigada de Rescate mexicana, cuyos miembros son conocidos como los "Topos", rescató el sábado a Jean Baptiste Patrick, un maestro de 35 años, de los restos de la Escuela Técnica Saint Gerard. Los Topos, que se formaron en los días posteriores al trágico terremoto de 1985 en la Ciudad de México y también trabajaron en Nueva York luego de los atentados terroristas del 11 de septiembre del 2001, trabajaban en coordinación con policías federales y marinos mexicanos. El grupo es conocido por su capacidad para excavar túneles que ayudan a encontrar sobrevivientes.
La mañana del domingo, rescatistas estadounidenses liberaron a tres sobrevivientes entre los escombros de un supermercado.
El sábado, trabajadores estadounidenses de rescate sacaron con vida a Saint-Helene Jean-Louis, una mujer de 29 años que permaneció atrapada cuatro días entre los escombros de un edificio de la Universidad de Puerto Príncipe. The Associated Press atestiguó el rescate 97 horas después del terremoto.
La ONU perdió al menos a 40 empleados, incluidos el jefe de misión tunecino Hedi Annabi y el subjefe brasileño Luiz Carlos da Costa, y cientos seguían desaparecidos. "Esta es la pérdida más grave y más grande en la historia de nuestra organización", dijo Ban.
La Brigada de Rescate mexicana, cuyos miembros son conocidos como los "Topos", rescató el sábado a Jean Baptiste Patrick, un maestro de 35 años, de los restos de la Escuela Técnica Saint Gerard. Los Topos, que se formaron en los días posteriores al trágico terremoto de 1985 en la Ciudad de México y también trabajaron en Nueva York luego de los atentados terroristas del 11 de septiembre del 2001, trabajaban en coordinación con policías federales y marinos mexicanos. El grupo es conocido por su capacidad para excavar túneles que ayudan a encontrar sobrevivientes.
La mañana del domingo, rescatistas estadounidenses liberaron a tres sobrevivientes entre los escombros de un supermercado.
El sábado, trabajadores estadounidenses de rescate sacaron con vida a Saint-Helene Jean-Louis, una mujer de 29 años que permaneció atrapada cuatro días entre los escombros de un edificio de la Universidad de Puerto Príncipe. The Associated Press atestiguó el rescate 97 horas después del terremoto.
Otros equipos de rescate celebraron algunos éxitos. Soldados israelíes rescataron el sábado al director del Ministerio de Recaudación de Haití, que estaba atrapado en las ruinas del edificio donde estuvo su oficina.
US accused of 'occupying' Haiti by French minister as troops flood in
By Aislinn Laing and Tom Leonard - The Telegraph 01/19/10 at 5:05 am
The French minister in charge of humanitarian relief called on the UN to "clarify" the American role amid claims the military build up was hampering aid efforts.
Alain Joyandet admitted he had been involved in a scuffle with a US commander in the airport's control tower over the flight plan for a French evacuation flight.
"This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti," Mr Joyandet said.
By Aislinn Laing and Tom Leonard - The Telegraph 01/19/10 at 5:05 am
The French minister in charge of humanitarian relief called on the UN to "clarify" the American role amid claims the military build up was hampering aid efforts.
Alain Joyandet admitted he had been involved in a scuffle with a US commander in the airport's control tower over the flight plan for a French evacuation flight.
"This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti," Mr Joyandet said.
Haiti Chaos Slowing Relief Efforts, Death Toll Rises
ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU and MIKE MELIA | 01/19/10 06:04 PM |
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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — U.S. troops landed on the lawn of Haiti's shattered presidential palace to the cheers of quake victims on Tuesday, and the U.N. said it would throw more police and soldiers into the sluggish global effort to aid the devastated country.
The U.N. forces are aimed at quelling the outbursts of violence that have slowed distribution of supplies, leaving many Haitians still without help a week after the magnitude-7.0 quake killed an estimated 200,000 people.
Looters were rampaging through part of downtown Port-au-Prince even as the Security Council voted to add 2,000 troops to the 7,000 military peacekeepers already in the country as well as 1,500 more police to the 2,100-strong international force.
Haitians jammed the fence of the palace grounds to gawk and cheer as U.S. troops emerged from six Navy helicopters.
"We are happy that they are coming, because we have so many problems," said Fede Felissaint, a hairdresser.
Given the circumstances, he did not even mind the troops taking up positions at the presidential palace. "If they want, they can stay longer than in 1915," he said, a reference to the start of a 19-year U.S. military presence in Haiti – something U.S. officials have repeatedly insisted they have no intention of repeating.
A full week after the quake, the capital's port remains blocked and too much aid must flow through the city's lone, small airport. Tens of thousands of people sleep in the streets or under plastic sheets in makeshift camps. Relief workers say they fear visiting some parts of the city.
Just four blocks from U.S. troop landing at the palace, hundreds of looters fought over bolts of cloth and other goods with broken bottles and clubs.
Story continues below
"That is how it is. There is nothing we can do," said Haitian police officer Arina Bence, who was trying to keep civilians out of the looting zone for their own safety.
Police Chief Mario Andersol said he can muster only 2,000 officers in the capital, down from 4,500 before the quake, and they "are not trained to deal with this kind of situation."
European Commission analysts estimate the quake injured 250,000 and made 1.5 million homeless, and many are exasperated by the delays in getting aid.
"I simply don't understand what is taking the foreigners so long," said Raymond Saintfort, a pharmacist who brought two suitcases of aspirin and antiseptics to survivors in the ruins of a nursing home.
Aid workers have distributed more than 250,000 daily food rations, with about half coming from the U.S. military, according to the World Food Program. But that is still far short of the need, and the U.N. agency managed to feed only half the 100,000 people it planned to reach on Monday. It said security forces were not available to escort its trucks and some military staff were injured while retrieving food from a badly damaged warehouse.
U.S. military efforts to speed aid through Port-au-Prince's airport appeared to be paying off after days of complaints by frustrated aid agencies: Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, head of U.S. Southern Command, the airport that handled just 30 fights a day before it was damaged in the quake is now handling 180 a day.
"We're doing everything in our power to speed aid to Haiti as fast as humanly possible," he said.
But the international aid group Doctors Without Borders complained that U.S. controllers have turned away a planeload of medical equipment three times since Sunday despite assurances it could land.
"We have had five patients in Martissant health center die for lack of the medical supplies that this plane was carrying," said Loris de Filippi, emergency coordinator the group's hospital in Cite Soleil.
The group said five other of its planes have been able to land.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, said it is preparing two other airfields for aid flights, one in the Haitian town of Jacmel and another in the Dominican Republic.
Meanwhile, rescuers continued finding survivors.
A Mexican rescue team created after that nation's 1985 earthquake rescued an elderly Haitan woman who had survived a week buried in the ruins of the residence of Haiti's Roman Catholic archbishop, who died.
Other teams pulled two Haitian women from a collapsed university building as one of the victim's sisters shouted praises to God.
In the city's Bourdon area, French, Dominican and Panamanian rescuers using high-tech detection equipment said they heard heartbeats underneath the rubble of a bank building. The husband of a missing woman watched from a crowd of onlookers.
"I'm going to be here until I find my wife; I'll keep it up until I find her, dead or alive," said Witchar Longfosse.
In New York, the U.N.'s most powerful body voted unanimously to bolster the international peacekeeping corps already in Haiti.
U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said the extra soldiers are essential to protect humanitarian convoys and as a reserve force if security deteriorates further.
The Pentagon announced that the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, had established a beachhead west of Port-au-Prince and it expected 800 of the 2,200 Marines in the unit to move ashore Tuesday. U.S. troop strength is rising to about 11,000, part onshore and part on ship.
Canada also has about 2,000 soldiers, sailors and air crew, including two warships, deploying to the towns of Jacmel and Leogane, southwest of the capital, and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Canada is ready to send more.
Italy, Spain and Venezuela say they, too, are sending naval ships to help.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday the U.S. troops plan to leave policing to the United Nations force, though he said they can defend themselves and innocent Haitians or foreigners if lawlessness boils over.
Still, some quickly found themselves doing a little policing: Troops of the 82nd Airborne stood guard outside the General Hospital because the crowd had grown so large that it was hindering the work of doctors trying to save lives.
Some neighborhoods are creating their own security forces, forming night brigades and machete-armed mobs to fight bandits.
"We never count on the government here, never," said 29-year-old Tatony Vieux in a hillside district where people used cars to block access to their street.
In the sprawling Cite Soleil slum, gangsters are reassuming control after escaping from the city's notorious main penitentiary and police urge citizens to take justice into their own hands.
"If you don't kill the criminals, they will all come back," a Haitian police officer shouted over a loudspeaker.
Elsewhere, overwhelmed surgeons appealed for anesthetics, scalpels, and saws for cutting off crushed limbs. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, visiting one hospital, reported its staff had to use vodka to sterilize equipment. "It's astonishing what the Haitians have been able to accomplish," he said.
U.S. and Haitian officials warned Haitians against trying to reach the United States by boat. Haiti's ambassador in Washington, Raymond Joseph, recorded a message in Creole to his countrymen, urging them not to leave.
"They will intercept you right on the water and send you back home where you came from," he said, according to a transcript on America.gov, a State Department Web site.
___
Associated Press writers contributing to this story included Tamara Lush, Jonathan M. Katz, Michelle Faul, Kevin Maurer in Port-au-Prince; Nicole Winfield in Rome; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations; Raf Casert in Brussels; Larry Margasak and Pauline Jelinek in Washington; Rob Gillies in Toronto.
ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU and MIKE MELIA | 01/19/10 06:04 PM |
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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — U.S. troops landed on the lawn of Haiti's shattered presidential palace to the cheers of quake victims on Tuesday, and the U.N. said it would throw more police and soldiers into the sluggish global effort to aid the devastated country.
The U.N. forces are aimed at quelling the outbursts of violence that have slowed distribution of supplies, leaving many Haitians still without help a week after the magnitude-7.0 quake killed an estimated 200,000 people.
Looters were rampaging through part of downtown Port-au-Prince even as the Security Council voted to add 2,000 troops to the 7,000 military peacekeepers already in the country as well as 1,500 more police to the 2,100-strong international force.
Haitians jammed the fence of the palace grounds to gawk and cheer as U.S. troops emerged from six Navy helicopters.
"We are happy that they are coming, because we have so many problems," said Fede Felissaint, a hairdresser.
Given the circumstances, he did not even mind the troops taking up positions at the presidential palace. "If they want, they can stay longer than in 1915," he said, a reference to the start of a 19-year U.S. military presence in Haiti – something U.S. officials have repeatedly insisted they have no intention of repeating.
A full week after the quake, the capital's port remains blocked and too much aid must flow through the city's lone, small airport. Tens of thousands of people sleep in the streets or under plastic sheets in makeshift camps. Relief workers say they fear visiting some parts of the city.
Just four blocks from U.S. troop landing at the palace, hundreds of looters fought over bolts of cloth and other goods with broken bottles and clubs.
Story continues below
"That is how it is. There is nothing we can do," said Haitian police officer Arina Bence, who was trying to keep civilians out of the looting zone for their own safety.
Police Chief Mario Andersol said he can muster only 2,000 officers in the capital, down from 4,500 before the quake, and they "are not trained to deal with this kind of situation."
European Commission analysts estimate the quake injured 250,000 and made 1.5 million homeless, and many are exasperated by the delays in getting aid.
"I simply don't understand what is taking the foreigners so long," said Raymond Saintfort, a pharmacist who brought two suitcases of aspirin and antiseptics to survivors in the ruins of a nursing home.
Aid workers have distributed more than 250,000 daily food rations, with about half coming from the U.S. military, according to the World Food Program. But that is still far short of the need, and the U.N. agency managed to feed only half the 100,000 people it planned to reach on Monday. It said security forces were not available to escort its trucks and some military staff were injured while retrieving food from a badly damaged warehouse.
U.S. military efforts to speed aid through Port-au-Prince's airport appeared to be paying off after days of complaints by frustrated aid agencies: Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, head of U.S. Southern Command, the airport that handled just 30 fights a day before it was damaged in the quake is now handling 180 a day.
"We're doing everything in our power to speed aid to Haiti as fast as humanly possible," he said.
But the international aid group Doctors Without Borders complained that U.S. controllers have turned away a planeload of medical equipment three times since Sunday despite assurances it could land.
"We have had five patients in Martissant health center die for lack of the medical supplies that this plane was carrying," said Loris de Filippi, emergency coordinator the group's hospital in Cite Soleil.
The group said five other of its planes have been able to land.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, said it is preparing two other airfields for aid flights, one in the Haitian town of Jacmel and another in the Dominican Republic.
Meanwhile, rescuers continued finding survivors.
A Mexican rescue team created after that nation's 1985 earthquake rescued an elderly Haitan woman who had survived a week buried in the ruins of the residence of Haiti's Roman Catholic archbishop, who died.
Other teams pulled two Haitian women from a collapsed university building as one of the victim's sisters shouted praises to God.
In the city's Bourdon area, French, Dominican and Panamanian rescuers using high-tech detection equipment said they heard heartbeats underneath the rubble of a bank building. The husband of a missing woman watched from a crowd of onlookers.
"I'm going to be here until I find my wife; I'll keep it up until I find her, dead or alive," said Witchar Longfosse.
In New York, the U.N.'s most powerful body voted unanimously to bolster the international peacekeeping corps already in Haiti.
U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said the extra soldiers are essential to protect humanitarian convoys and as a reserve force if security deteriorates further.
The Pentagon announced that the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, had established a beachhead west of Port-au-Prince and it expected 800 of the 2,200 Marines in the unit to move ashore Tuesday. U.S. troop strength is rising to about 11,000, part onshore and part on ship.
Canada also has about 2,000 soldiers, sailors and air crew, including two warships, deploying to the towns of Jacmel and Leogane, southwest of the capital, and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Canada is ready to send more.
Italy, Spain and Venezuela say they, too, are sending naval ships to help.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday the U.S. troops plan to leave policing to the United Nations force, though he said they can defend themselves and innocent Haitians or foreigners if lawlessness boils over.
Still, some quickly found themselves doing a little policing: Troops of the 82nd Airborne stood guard outside the General Hospital because the crowd had grown so large that it was hindering the work of doctors trying to save lives.
Some neighborhoods are creating their own security forces, forming night brigades and machete-armed mobs to fight bandits.
"We never count on the government here, never," said 29-year-old Tatony Vieux in a hillside district where people used cars to block access to their street.
In the sprawling Cite Soleil slum, gangsters are reassuming control after escaping from the city's notorious main penitentiary and police urge citizens to take justice into their own hands.
"If you don't kill the criminals, they will all come back," a Haitian police officer shouted over a loudspeaker.
Elsewhere, overwhelmed surgeons appealed for anesthetics, scalpels, and saws for cutting off crushed limbs. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, visiting one hospital, reported its staff had to use vodka to sterilize equipment. "It's astonishing what the Haitians have been able to accomplish," he said.
U.S. and Haitian officials warned Haitians against trying to reach the United States by boat. Haiti's ambassador in Washington, Raymond Joseph, recorded a message in Creole to his countrymen, urging them not to leave.
"They will intercept you right on the water and send you back home where you came from," he said, according to a transcript on America.gov, a State Department Web site.
___
Associated Press writers contributing to this story included Tamara Lush, Jonathan M. Katz, Michelle Faul, Kevin Maurer in Port-au-Prince; Nicole Winfield in Rome; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations; Raf Casert in Brussels; Larry Margasak and Pauline Jelinek in Washington; Rob Gillies in Toronto.
Haiti Journal: Hacksaws and Vodka -- Resurrecting Port-au-Prince's Largest Hospital From The Rubble
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Read More: Haiti , Haiti Disaster , Haiti Earthquake , Haiti Earthquake Relief , Haiti Relief , Haiti Relief Effort , Hatia , Port Au Prince , Slideshow , Living News
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Haiti Journal
Day 4: January 18, 2010
EDITOR'S NOTE: Two photo slideshows appear in this post. The first one is not graphic. The second one includes extremely graphic depictions of surgery and wounds. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.
The country has one doctor for 11,000 people. Electricity and running water are available in Port-au-Prince for two hours -- on a good day. The chief surgeon at the General Hospital (the largest public national hospital) told me that patients often die in the operating room because the generator fails -- on a good day. Under these circumstances, a small group from Partners in Health, led by Paul Farmer, is trying to resurrect the city's most important hospital from the rubble.
I have been there with a small group of seven surgeons, doctors and nurses who performed the first surgery. That was four days after the quake shook for 15 seconds -- flattening the city and over half of the buildings, including the hospital where 150 nurses remain buried in the nursing school. The sickly, sweet stench of death and rotting flesh fills the air as I walk by.
Two orthopedic surgeons, my wife and father in-law, started the first amputation without water, electricity, or disinfectant. They used a rusty hacksaw we washed with vodka, lit by camping headlamps in an empty room with a few boxes of supplies we had packed into our plane. Over the last two days, we created five operating areas to care for the 1,200 patients who are still lying on the ground outside in the hospital's courtyard. They desperately need surgery to repair their crushed and broken bones, now festering and infected in the humidity and sweltering Haitian sun. The nurses and hospital staff are either dead or at home caring for their families. In the United States we have ten staff for every patient at most hospitals. There now are only a few local staff left for thousands of patients. They, too, are dead. They, too, have lost their homes. Today some began to return to work, their families gone or injured, their homes in piles of rock and debris.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Hospital Director Dr. Lassegue, Bill Clinton, and Dr. Hyman
ASSESSING NEEDS AND GETTING ORGANIZED
This morning we stopped at a hardware store on our way to the hospital to find three rusty hacksaws. We are still operating with headlamps and no electricity, oxygen, suction, or cardiac monitoring equipment. It is a week after the earthquake and supplies have spilled into the country from around the world, but much is still at the airport or in processing somehow. This hospital -- the main hospital -- is not getting the supplies. President Clinton brought what he could today to help but we will run out tomorrow.
There is peace and calm and a sense of gratitude pouring from every bed and every pair of eyes that look at me as I walk by. There is no danger here, no issue of security. There is no need for assessment. There is need for action. We must treat the patients who still can survive, before they need the morgue instead of post-operative care.
At the highest level we need organized and immediate logistical support. We must get everything and everyone to where the need is greatest, especially here at the nation's main hospital. I received an email from the disaster department (Health and Human Services) stating that they heard from the United Nations that we are fully operational. We are operating, but it is not "operational" yet. People and supplies want to find their way to us (and other places in need) but the dots are not connecting.
SOME PROGRESS
We did have our successes today, under the guidance of Dr. Benjamin, a Haitian-American surgical care intensivist from Mount Sinai. He came down with us on Friday. We turned one of the few remaining safe buildings into a post-operative intensive care unit. At 10 a.m. this morning it was finally clean. By 6 p.m. tonight it was filled with over 50 post-operative patients. They were finally able to be moved from a cramped preoperative room, filled with putrefying wounds, where they had been languishing without care at night.
In three days we have gone from a nearly deserted hospital to a partially-functioning surgical hospital (as well as we can without water or electricity or supplies). Haitian-American surgeons and nurses showed up today to help care for these patients over night, which is the first time there will be any care at night. Our small team of seven has performed 75 operations over the last three days -- they now lay behind me, exhausted and asleep. And I can barely keep my eyes open as I write this after nearly three days with no sleep and little food or water.
There are miracles. One girl, whose bed was the back hatch of a Toyota pickup truck, was unstable after we removed her right leg, which had been crushed by the rubble. We left her last night, uncertain if she would survive. But she did. And a sixteen year old girl delivered twins -- stillborn in the middle of the night, alone in the dark, groaning from the labor pains and the stabbing pain of her crushed and broken leg.
THE SONGS OF DARKNESS
The preoperative area is dark after sunset, still without electricity as both our main generators broke tonight. There are not enough doctors or nurses to staff it. Patients wait and pray. That is all they can do.
All the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) left because we had no security, even though there has not been one single act of violence or chaos despite the lack of food, water or care for most of the patients. After they left, as I walked into the room to check on the patients, I heard the songs of darkness. The patients and their families sang songs of prayer for strength and courage to bear the burden of suffering through the night. The singing, in unison by patients and their families, filled the darkness. My heart and soul filled with light.
How can a people be so full of love and patience and kindness? And be that way in the midst of unimaginable loss and suffering?
REBUILDING HAITI'S TRAINING HOSPITAL
I received this email from my new friend, Evan Lyon, MD, faculty at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and a volunteer for Partners in Health. He has worked in Haiti for 10 years. We are trying to coordinate and rebuild the hospital, together with the hospital administration, to create a sustainable, durable institution. This was the Massachusetts General of Haiti, the training site for nearly all its doctors and nurses, and now we have to rebuild it. Today, one of the medical students asked President Clinton how he could help him continue his education, desperate to learn and come back to Haiti to care for his people. We need to help those students finish their training and come back.
Here is what Evan wrote me....
For over 10 years, Zanmi Lasante has been one of the largest and most attractive training sites for graduating medical students. The majority of our doctors and nurses, our pharmacists and lab technicians, have trained at the Hopital Universite de l'Etat d'Haiti. Until less than a decade ago, all doctors trained in Haiti graduated from the national medical school. This university hospital helped to train them all. We have been honored to receive many of the top graduates of the national university at Zanmi Lasante for their first year out of medical training for a year of social service. Our best medical staff comes from their number and they are leading partners in health's efforts to respond to the disaster.
The university hospital sustained massive damage; at least 50 percent of the campus cannot be used. Many buildings are destroyed. All are cracked. Some are safe to work in. The adjacent nursing school was completely destroyed. We are working to help the general hospital back to its feet in the dusty shadow of the nursing school where the bodies of many, many second year nursing students remain trapped in the rubble. It will be weeks or months until the rubble is cleared. The smell of death is everywhere. Many of the dead are our sisters and brothers in health, in the difficult work to relieve suffering.
The devastation and sadness of the earthquake are beyond comprehension. Certainly far beyond this single doctor's heart to see.
Today we worked to get the university hospital on its feet again. Dr. Lassegue, the hospital's director, and his staff have been ubiquitous at the hospital and are leading efforts to care for the injured. Partners in Health is working closely with the hospital to provide care, and to direct relief efforts from international aid agency's from around the world. We had five operating rooms operational today. Surgeons had been operating with daylight and flashlights but the electricity is now restored. Over 40 operations were performed today. We estimate over 1,000 are already assessed and awaiting surgery on the campus. People are laying on mats on the ground, on the ground, in shade where it can be found, under sheets strung from the trees.
Inpatient wards are coming together. We hope to increase to 10 operating rooms in the next 48 hours, with 24-hour service now that the electricity has been restored. The hospital must stand again.
As Dr. David Walton and I left the hospital compound this evening, we saw the lights of a large front-end loader working near the morgue. Three dump trucks sat at the ready. Where thousands upon thousands of bodies had laid just days ago, perhaps 40-50 bodies remained: swollen, alone, pushed to the side of the pavement and slippery with blood and body fluids. As we walked past the morgue and the largest pile of bodies, we noticed the one man was wearing a Zamia Asante shirt when he died. I cannot begin to understand why this small detail made a scene of unspeakable sadness even sadder.
We are with all Haitians. This man was with us and is now gone.
Please donate to Partners in Health at www.pih.org. They are integrated with the Haitian health care system and can create a sustainable system from the ashes and sorrow.
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Haiti Journal
Day 4: January 18, 2010
EDITOR'S NOTE: Two photo slideshows appear in this post. The first one is not graphic. The second one includes extremely graphic depictions of surgery and wounds. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.
The country has one doctor for 11,000 people. Electricity and running water are available in Port-au-Prince for two hours -- on a good day. The chief surgeon at the General Hospital (the largest public national hospital) told me that patients often die in the operating room because the generator fails -- on a good day. Under these circumstances, a small group from Partners in Health, led by Paul Farmer, is trying to resurrect the city's most important hospital from the rubble.
I have been there with a small group of seven surgeons, doctors and nurses who performed the first surgery. That was four days after the quake shook for 15 seconds -- flattening the city and over half of the buildings, including the hospital where 150 nurses remain buried in the nursing school. The sickly, sweet stench of death and rotting flesh fills the air as I walk by.
Two orthopedic surgeons, my wife and father in-law, started the first amputation without water, electricity, or disinfectant. They used a rusty hacksaw we washed with vodka, lit by camping headlamps in an empty room with a few boxes of supplies we had packed into our plane. Over the last two days, we created five operating areas to care for the 1,200 patients who are still lying on the ground outside in the hospital's courtyard. They desperately need surgery to repair their crushed and broken bones, now festering and infected in the humidity and sweltering Haitian sun. The nurses and hospital staff are either dead or at home caring for their families. In the United States we have ten staff for every patient at most hospitals. There now are only a few local staff left for thousands of patients. They, too, are dead. They, too, have lost their homes. Today some began to return to work, their families gone or injured, their homes in piles of rock and debris.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Hospital Director Dr. Lassegue, Bill Clinton, and Dr. Hyman
ASSESSING NEEDS AND GETTING ORGANIZED
This morning we stopped at a hardware store on our way to the hospital to find three rusty hacksaws. We are still operating with headlamps and no electricity, oxygen, suction, or cardiac monitoring equipment. It is a week after the earthquake and supplies have spilled into the country from around the world, but much is still at the airport or in processing somehow. This hospital -- the main hospital -- is not getting the supplies. President Clinton brought what he could today to help but we will run out tomorrow.
There is peace and calm and a sense of gratitude pouring from every bed and every pair of eyes that look at me as I walk by. There is no danger here, no issue of security. There is no need for assessment. There is need for action. We must treat the patients who still can survive, before they need the morgue instead of post-operative care.
At the highest level we need organized and immediate logistical support. We must get everything and everyone to where the need is greatest, especially here at the nation's main hospital. I received an email from the disaster department (Health and Human Services) stating that they heard from the United Nations that we are fully operational. We are operating, but it is not "operational" yet. People and supplies want to find their way to us (and other places in need) but the dots are not connecting.
SOME PROGRESS
We did have our successes today, under the guidance of Dr. Benjamin, a Haitian-American surgical care intensivist from Mount Sinai. He came down with us on Friday. We turned one of the few remaining safe buildings into a post-operative intensive care unit. At 10 a.m. this morning it was finally clean. By 6 p.m. tonight it was filled with over 50 post-operative patients. They were finally able to be moved from a cramped preoperative room, filled with putrefying wounds, where they had been languishing without care at night.
In three days we have gone from a nearly deserted hospital to a partially-functioning surgical hospital (as well as we can without water or electricity or supplies). Haitian-American surgeons and nurses showed up today to help care for these patients over night, which is the first time there will be any care at night. Our small team of seven has performed 75 operations over the last three days -- they now lay behind me, exhausted and asleep. And I can barely keep my eyes open as I write this after nearly three days with no sleep and little food or water.
There are miracles. One girl, whose bed was the back hatch of a Toyota pickup truck, was unstable after we removed her right leg, which had been crushed by the rubble. We left her last night, uncertain if she would survive. But she did. And a sixteen year old girl delivered twins -- stillborn in the middle of the night, alone in the dark, groaning from the labor pains and the stabbing pain of her crushed and broken leg.
THE SONGS OF DARKNESS
The preoperative area is dark after sunset, still without electricity as both our main generators broke tonight. There are not enough doctors or nurses to staff it. Patients wait and pray. That is all they can do.
All the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) left because we had no security, even though there has not been one single act of violence or chaos despite the lack of food, water or care for most of the patients. After they left, as I walked into the room to check on the patients, I heard the songs of darkness. The patients and their families sang songs of prayer for strength and courage to bear the burden of suffering through the night. The singing, in unison by patients and their families, filled the darkness. My heart and soul filled with light.
How can a people be so full of love and patience and kindness? And be that way in the midst of unimaginable loss and suffering?
REBUILDING HAITI'S TRAINING HOSPITAL
I received this email from my new friend, Evan Lyon, MD, faculty at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and a volunteer for Partners in Health. He has worked in Haiti for 10 years. We are trying to coordinate and rebuild the hospital, together with the hospital administration, to create a sustainable, durable institution. This was the Massachusetts General of Haiti, the training site for nearly all its doctors and nurses, and now we have to rebuild it. Today, one of the medical students asked President Clinton how he could help him continue his education, desperate to learn and come back to Haiti to care for his people. We need to help those students finish their training and come back.
Here is what Evan wrote me....
For over 10 years, Zanmi Lasante has been one of the largest and most attractive training sites for graduating medical students. The majority of our doctors and nurses, our pharmacists and lab technicians, have trained at the Hopital Universite de l'Etat d'Haiti. Until less than a decade ago, all doctors trained in Haiti graduated from the national medical school. This university hospital helped to train them all. We have been honored to receive many of the top graduates of the national university at Zanmi Lasante for their first year out of medical training for a year of social service. Our best medical staff comes from their number and they are leading partners in health's efforts to respond to the disaster.
The university hospital sustained massive damage; at least 50 percent of the campus cannot be used. Many buildings are destroyed. All are cracked. Some are safe to work in. The adjacent nursing school was completely destroyed. We are working to help the general hospital back to its feet in the dusty shadow of the nursing school where the bodies of many, many second year nursing students remain trapped in the rubble. It will be weeks or months until the rubble is cleared. The smell of death is everywhere. Many of the dead are our sisters and brothers in health, in the difficult work to relieve suffering.
The devastation and sadness of the earthquake are beyond comprehension. Certainly far beyond this single doctor's heart to see.
Today we worked to get the university hospital on its feet again. Dr. Lassegue, the hospital's director, and his staff have been ubiquitous at the hospital and are leading efforts to care for the injured. Partners in Health is working closely with the hospital to provide care, and to direct relief efforts from international aid agency's from around the world. We had five operating rooms operational today. Surgeons had been operating with daylight and flashlights but the electricity is now restored. Over 40 operations were performed today. We estimate over 1,000 are already assessed and awaiting surgery on the campus. People are laying on mats on the ground, on the ground, in shade where it can be found, under sheets strung from the trees.
Inpatient wards are coming together. We hope to increase to 10 operating rooms in the next 48 hours, with 24-hour service now that the electricity has been restored. The hospital must stand again.
As Dr. David Walton and I left the hospital compound this evening, we saw the lights of a large front-end loader working near the morgue. Three dump trucks sat at the ready. Where thousands upon thousands of bodies had laid just days ago, perhaps 40-50 bodies remained: swollen, alone, pushed to the side of the pavement and slippery with blood and body fluids. As we walked past the morgue and the largest pile of bodies, we noticed the one man was wearing a Zamia Asante shirt when he died. I cannot begin to understand why this small detail made a scene of unspeakable sadness even sadder.
We are with all Haitians. This man was with us and is now gone.
Please donate to Partners in Health at www.pih.org. They are integrated with the Haitian health care system and can create a sustainable system from the ashes and sorrow.
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