CIR Doctors Respond to the Crisis in Haiti

Dr. Nailah Thompson returned to Port-au-Prince, Haiti for her second volunteer deployment with Project Medishare eight months after the catastrophic earthquake struck the country’s capitol. She was welcomed into the organization’s new, permanent hospital facility, this time assuming the role of chief medical officer. But she felt frustrated and upset that the health care crisis remained so severe. The new hospital was still over capacity. Every day hundreds of people were trying to get in; the doctors were forced to turn people away. “I wanted it to be better [than the first deployment] and it really wasn’t… There’s still so much need and not enough people going down… I don’t think people realize how bad it is down there even today.”

Dr. Thompson, who first deployed to Haiti as a volunteer physician three weeks after the earthquake struck on January 12, 2010, felt compelled to volunteer after watching coverage of the earthquake on television and actively sought out an organization that could put her on the ground. “I felt a need to go. I had never been to Haiti but I had a skill that would be helpful.”

Project Medishare built a temporary field hospital of large tents at the Port-au-Prince airport. Dr. Thompson was assigned 12-hour shifts in the medicine tent, which could treat 125 patients. “We were in a tent with a generator losing power. We had to do the best we could with the medicine we had. It’s just a different world,” she said.

What can I say about Haiti? I am still trying to work through my feelings about my experience. It was tragic and wonderful at the same time. Overall it was well organized. Konbit for Haiti arranged the travel and overnight logistics for the trip from NY to Miami with a stay in the airport Comfort Inn. I stayed there for a night before and a night after Haiti. The accommodations were perfectly fine with even a complimentary breakfast thrown in!

On the first Saturday we arrived at the Miami airport in the wee hours of the morning (about 3:30 AM) and were greeted by the Project Medishare folks who expedited our bags and boarding without a hitch. I actually had only one carry-on, and therefore volunteered to take down two Medishare bags as my travel allotment. After a short trip to Port-au-Prince we arrived around noon. After clearing immigrations in the currently non-air-conditioned temporary building, we were met by a Medishare logistics volunteer at customs who was able to whisk us through what would have otherwise been a very long line.

Then we were efficiently packed into a minivan for the 20 minute or so trip to the Hospital Bernard Mevs. Driving in Haiti is an experience in and of itself. There are no lanes and seemingly no rules. May the fittest survive!

I’ve been back from Haiti for 2 weeks now. I dropped right back into the life of a busy surgical resident with all of the daily challenges and frustrations of trying to care for my patients in a hectic county hospital in Los Angeles — except that now the memories from Haiti remind me that my moment to moment frustrations are nothing compared to those faced by the Haitian people I was lucky enough to meet.

I spent a week working in Hopital Bernard Mevs in Port au Prince which is jointly run by Project Medishare and two Haitian surgeons.

It has been six months since the earthquake. To the visitor it seems that the work of rebuilding Port au Prince has scarcely begun. Piles of rubble are everywhere. There did not appear to be any organized effort to clear it. Once in a while I saw a lone figure pulling rocks from a pile. One man told me he was still searching for the bodies of his family members. Tent cities have begun the metamorphosis into shanty towns. People carry on with the business of daily life as best they can. I saw women washing their children in water flowing freely down the gutters. Women selling dusty 3rd and 4th-hand goods, shoes with worn soles, T shirts with stains and holes, mangos, bananas, and dusty packets of crackers. I saw women selling water in single serving plastic pouches from baskets balanced precariously on their heads. Everyone seemed to be doing their best to just make do.

I tell everybody about my experience in Haiti that I put my drop in the ocean, this only can be comprehended when somebody sees with his own eyes the need in Haiti. But I also like to say that if …

I worked in the ER of Project Medishare, where we saw many patients with complaints ranging from fractured bones to hernias, to inoperable cancers. We had much of the equipment that exists in modern hospitals in the United States, but …

Dr. Jonel Daphnis, an emergency medicine resident at King’s County Hospital in Brooklyn, went to Haiti as part of the National Organization of the Advancement of Haitians – New York Chapter (NOAH-NY). He took some stunning photographs and wrote powerful …

Dr. Nick Nelson, an internal medicine resident at Highland Hospital in Oakland, CA, shared some of his photos with us from his March trip with CIR. They give a good sense of how local hospitals are getting by with whatever …

Thank you to Dr. Aaron Harries from Alameda County Medical Center for sharing these photos with us. Pictured in the slideshow are: Dr. Harries, Dr. Shankar LeVine, Dr. Molly Moore, Dr. Nailah Thompson, and Haitian translator Nixon at Project Medishare …

“The basic things we took for granted made it really challenging,” said Dr. Lynette Leighton, a family medicine resident at San Francisco General Hospital, after spending a week on the internal medicine service at the University of Miami field hospital. …

While many have been critical of the media presence in Haiti, especially in the days right after the earthquake, there has been some excellent coverage of the relief efforts undertaken by heatlhcare workers and other volunteers. CIR members have been …

“The reason I went into medicine was to do international work,” said Dr. Shankar LeVine, an Emergency Medicine resident at Alameda County Medical Center. “When I was picking residencies, I actually picked Highland Hospital for the training it provides — …

I have been a part of medical missions in the past, but nothing could have prepared me for the subacute needs of the Haitian people in the weeks after the disaster of January 12th. As I am currently in a …