Dispatches from Cuban medical teams in Haiti

international | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Friday March 05, 2010 00:24 by Simon McGuinness - Cuba Support Group Ireland

Blog from the Cuban Leogâne Field Hospital, outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti

New blog site established to circumvent the absence of news from Haiti in the commercial media. Live from a field hospital in the earthquake zone ...

Dispatches from Haiti
March 3, 2010 by mediccglobal

Guest Blogger, Wing Wu, MD
US graduate of the Latin American Medical School (2007)
Volunteer with the Cuban medical teams in Haiti, Feb. 3-March 1, 2010
Wednesday, February 03, 2010 5:20 a.m.

There are 7 US ELAM medical grads on this trip, all WOMEN!!!

Wednesday, February 03, 2010 8:48 p.m.

We made it to Haiti! We’re currently in Port-au-Prince and are with the Cuban organizers. They´ve greeted us with a warm welcome and some warm food! All is going well so far. We’re staying in some tents. We will be moved to a makeshift tented hospital area right outside of Port-au-Prince where for the time being we will be working as “Family Docs”, prevention, epidemiology, education, and well…whatever else needed. We are past the acute phase and will be working towards sustainability and prevention. It sounds like we will be there for a week or two then we will be moved. We are currently waiting for a delegation of about 200 ELAM grads from all over to join the Cubans, making up our own area a little south of Port-au-Prince.

Friday, February 05, 2010

Day 1 of work has left us all exhausted. Between Melissa (Mitchell) and I, we have seen 100 patients–a lot of the Haitians that were seen were women and children probably the first or second time to see a doctor. We are doing well and are happy to be here doing what we can. It is an amazing experience: the destruction, trauma and level of poverty is exhausting and extremely humbling.

Sunday, February 07, 2010

Yesterday afternoon when we were doing consults one of my colleagues saw a 1 month old baby with its father. The mother had died in the earthquake 6 days after his birth. The baby had been brought to us weighing 6 lbs, starving, severely dehydrated with diarrhea and vomiting for weeks. The baby was given pedialyte and as much medical attention as possible but unfortunately sent back home with instructions as to how to care for the child. You could see the exhaustion and stress in the father’s eyes and I had my colleague ask him if he was doing ok at which point his eyes started swelling with tears and began to talk as tears flowed down his face. I later found out that the father had 5 other children waiting for his attention at home and with no money, no work, no wife…he didn’t know what else he could do.

And that is the effect of poverty on a country in the midst of a natural disaster.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Today, about 7 new ELAM grads from the Dominical Republic arrived to add to the troop here, we’re expecting at least 50 in total to incorporate in the hospital here, so that should help out some. The consults during these days have us working pretty crazy, seeing an average of 50 people, lots of kids… Every morning, at 6 am, there is always a line of people rounding the block waiting patiently to see us.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Wing(center) with newly delivered twins
I had the opportunity to take photos of the first twin caesarean done here at our hospital. It was BEAUTIFUL. Quick and sweet. A healthy baby girl and baby boy…perfect. Mama is doing well also…father, a little standoffish, proud yet uncomfortable to carry the babies.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Some of the ELAM graduates from the other countries have now arrived and are now slowly incorporating themselves in the work that is needed here. Their job is essentially what I thought we would be doing–going out to the various “tent cities” and setting up consults there, bringing medicines and stethoscopes in hand. They’ve got a huge job in front of them. I had the opportunity to see a few of these tent cities, and they’re pretty rough. Tents are made of sheets and sticks…a disaster when the rain comes. Can’t help of thinking of these families when it rains here.

Saturday, February 20, 2010
We got a bit of a break yesterday and today, thanks to a Haitian friend that has been working with IFCO and MUDHA. He offered to take the group to an orphanage out in Leogane. There are around 60 kids that have lived there and thankfully, only 2 had died from the earthquake–one little girl did get trapped under a wall though and they had to amputate both her legs a few inches below the knees.

We were taken to a central area of Leogane where we were able to walk around for a while. Destruction, rubble, fallen cables, fallen buildings, slanted buildings, things that may have been a building but truly just look like a heap of rubble. I had to stop taking pictures because it just became rubble after a while…but then, you see the shoes, the pots and pans, the play pens, the posters of Jesus, flowers over heaps of concrete recognizing the dead still trapped, and buildings spray painted with “We Need Help” in every language possible. Although the sun was burning my skin with heat,….there was a coldness present. The streets were filled not only by rubble but of Haitians. Haitians trying to pick up their lives and work again, rebuild their homes and stores…unfortunately, there was no one there to help them rebuild.

On our way out, a bus filed with some more of our ELAM colleagues happened to drive by. There were about 60 docs graduated in Cuba staying at this camp site–countries included Nicaragua, Mexico, Malawi, Venezuela, Bolivia, etc. It was incredible to see and be around this second camp. These docs have set up consults in the area that we were visiting in Leogane as well as were working in a Cuban hospital nearby. They see around 800 patients a day! There are at least 250 ELAM grads in Haiti working with the Cuban team, located in about 5 different sites! Every time we have an interview, or we run into other students and Cubans, I can’t help but feel so privileged and proud of being a part of this mission and being a graduate of the Latin American School of Medicine.