Haiti: A Brightness of Hope

My mom's most recent email:

Mark was not able to get through via the satellite phone on Saturday but he called last night. Even with the satellite phone, the transmission is very rough and goes in and out so sometimes it takes him 5-6 phone calls in 1 night to get the message across.

He's been in the country for 8 days now and last two days were spent seeing the injured and delivering food. There continue to be people who come with terrible injuries, but infections in those injuries is the big worry now.

Five of the containers of food and supplies from the LDS church have arrived. Mark and team members helped unload the hundreds of boxes from 2 of the containers into a secure warehouse. Then they took a truckload of these boxes of food and delivered them to the people in refugee camps, waiting outside of the hospitals, and camping on the grounds of the church. 1 box of food can feed a family of 4 for about a week.

He can tell that supplies and medical teams are becoming much more abundant. The lines of people waiting to be seen are shrinking. In fact, when he went to a hospital that is called the "command center", there were many physicians and nurses looking for things to do. Part of the problem seems to be the lack of a central coordination effort. When I asked him if the teams had enough suture and supplies, he said that the recent shipment deliveries throughout Port au Prince seem to be providing what is needed, but the system is overwhelmed and what has been sent needs to get delivered and utilized in the best way. When I asked him if there was something in short supply, the main thing he could think of were sterile gowns for surgerical procedures. But basically, the supplies seem to be getting there, at least from his perspective.

When I asked him about what was happening in the city, he said that Port au Prince is filled with a massive odor- the smell of death from all the decaying bodies. One Haitian took him to a location and showed him where at least 100 young people (mostly women) were studying to become nurses. All of them died during the earthquake while attending classes. No one was recovered. He sees many rescue teams in Port au Prince without anything to do now because no one is being rescued anymore.

The bulldozers have finally arrived or been repaired and have started to clear certain areas of the city. It still reminds him of photos of Germany and France in the WWII photos showing bombed out cities. Most houses in Port au Prince are built with concrete blocks and then have a couple of concrete beams across the top to hold the roof on. It is those concrete beams that collapsed that have caused so many severe head injuries, broken limbs, amputations, etc.

Mark is very impressed with the work of Jeff Randle, medical doctor in Rehab medicine and a member of the LDS Humanitarian Team, and his work with Healing Hands for Haiti. He started the clinic on a shoestring budget 12 years ago and by 2005, they were seeing nearly 5000 patients. Here are some other stats on their website http://www.healinghandsforhaiti.org regarding what they accomplished in 2005:

• 4934 patients seen in clinic, 15% are children
• Therapy staff treated 2612 patients, or 55.51% of the total patients treated at the Clinic this year
• The Orthotics and Prosthetics Department at Kay Kapab Clinic evaluated 496 patients, manufactured 220 devices, including 29 lower extremity prostheses and 6 upper extremity prostheses. There were 133 orthoses and 52 other types of devices made
• We now have 4 volunteer Haitian physicians at Kay Kapab Clinic. Specialties include physiatry (physical medicine and rehabilitation), orthopedic surgery, and internal medicine. The physicians treated 25% of the patients seen at the clinic.
• Healing Hands for Haiti and Medishare http://medi-share.org/ partnered in sponsoring surgeries for hydrocephalic babies. This year 17 surgeries, one orthopaedic corrective surgery and 16 shunt surgeries for hydrocephalic children were performed
• Offered a seminar on sign language in order to enable our staff to communicate with deaf patients and one of our employees who is deaf
• 20 candidates selected to enrol in the Rehabilitation Aide I Program. 15 actually began the course which was taught by 4 foreign teachers (physical therapists) and 9 Haitian teachers ( 7 doctors and 2 teachers from the Department of Linguistics).
• 399 chairs were distributed in Les Cayes, Jacmel, Gonaive, Port a Paix and Cap Haitian
• Generous anonymous donation received to be used toward planning and construction of first rehabilitation hospital in Haiti

Although the clinic was greatly damaged and some employees died, teams of doctors and construction workers are heading over to help with the repair. This is important because, besides offering rehab therapy, a shop had been built where Haitians were trained to make prosthetic limbs. This will be a great need in this country where so many have had an amputation in the last 10 days. Here's a recent article.

Back to the LDS Humanitarian team: Although 1/2 of the team returned to the US on Sunday, the remaining members feel that the best service they can offer in the next couple of days is for the least served. What has been determined is that the needs are now greatest outside of Port au Prince. So they are heading out of town today.

Mark's last comment was how the Haitian people have demonstrated amazing resilency throughout this horrible catastrophe. He said that even those men and women and children who are lying on the ground with broken limbs and injuries, have a brightness of hope in their faces. He feels grateful to have had this opportunity to meet them and to learn from them.

We are still hopeful that he will be returning Wednesday night, but based on their logistics getting there, I will believe it when I see it!

Thank you, again, for all of your positive thoughts, emails of encouragement, and prayers.