ARTICLE - MIAMI DOLPHINS

FORMER MIAMI DOLPHINS TOUR TENT HOSPITAL IN HAITI
(Miami Herald ) By Armando Salguero

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- The biggest and best hospital in Haiti is located inside a bunch of tents pitched on a dirt field.

The University of Miami Global Institute-Project Medishare field hospital has a long, proper-sounding name, but the locals know it simply as the place under the tents where great care is administered, some miracles happen and, yes, some lives end.

Think of this hot, dusty outpost 10 minutes from Toussaint Louverture Airport as a 21st century M*A*S*H unit on steroids.

The place was set up only hours after an earthquake hit this capital city Jan. 12 and it boasts the country's first neonatal and pediatric ICU.

Those units operate in a tent.

The trauma emergency room is also in a tent. That's where hundreds of crush injury victims from the earthquake were attended.

Now the volunteer doctors and nurses in that tent mostly address auto accident injuries, gunshot wounds and machete attack wounds.

But this is an otherwise atypical facility.

The X-ray room? In a tent.

The orthopedic room and prosthesis lab? In a tent.

The morgue? In a tent.

The doctors, nurses and administrators work on a volunteer basis. Hundreds of them shuttle in and out every Saturday on a Vision Air 737 flight from Miami for their seven-day shifts.

Over the weekend, some former Miami Dolphins players and club executives boarded the charter to tour the field hospital, donate $25,000 to Project Medishare and deliver 13 ShelterBox disaster survival kits that consist of blankets, insulated ground sheets, a stove and other items -- including, of course, a tent.

`AMAZING' TURNAROUND
``This is impressive,'' former safety Bryant Salter said after the hospital tour in which he and former players Bobby Harden, Sean Hill and Nat Moore met doctors and visited patients.

Salter served 21 years as a United States Foreign Service officer after he left the Dolphins in 1977. He has seen distressed and depressed people around the world and how the United States has tried to meet those people's needs under difficult circumstances.

But this . . . this is extreme.

``I've seen a lot of places where people have to do things on the spur of the moment and I've seen our military come in and set up camps under extreme circumstances,'' Salter said. ``This is right up there with that. It's amazing what people can do when faced with adversity. It's incredible what people can do when they come together and chip in.

``I didn't do anything today but see the situation, but I certainly got a lot out of it.''

This field hospital treats between 300 and 400 patients daily. Borne out of great need and sprung from the weeds, this place remains a study in medicine practiced under spartan conditions.

``We had no showers and no toilets at all the first four days,'' said hospital chief operating officer Thomas Koulouris. ``It was battlefield conditions. All we had were patients coming in on helicopters.''

An outdoor shower stall built of wood and PVC pipes was eventually built for the staff. It is a coed environment in the showers and toilets. And the shower is no place to relax because there are strict rules written on the wood ``walls'' to encourage everyone to finish quickly and conserve water.

The facility has a solar-powered water purifier that cleans the 5,000 gallons the facility receives from the nearby airport daily. The power plant consists of nine Caterpillar XQ 200 generators the size of tool sheds.

The generator engines grumble and gurgle angrily 24 hours a day, and the heat and workload can overcome them. So doctors hooked up garden hoses that spray water on the engines as they consume 10,000 gallons of diesel every 10 days.

Unlike the generators, there is little recourse for keeping the staff cool and comfortable.

``You run around in the heat all day and you have no a chance to sit. It's physically and emotionally overwhelming,'' chief nurse Jennifer Jasilewicz said. ``But at the end of the week, you think back, and it's the most amazing experience you can have.''

Jasilewicz has been in Haiti nine weeks. She estimates she has lost 15-20 pounds.

``We get pallets of [meals ready to eat] every once in a while so we get that for extra food,'' she said. ``Otherwise food is scarce around here. You don't get much.''

This field hospital is located behind two gates manned by armed guards. Concertina wire surrounds the all important supply tent, the rows and rows of sharp, menacing razors serving as a third layer of security.

The wire protects 13,000 square feet of medical supplies the camp has received from countries throughout the world. A 100-bed hospital in the United States would have about 1,300-1,500 square feet of supplies.

``It's the largest medical supply stash in this country,'' Koulouris said. ``A lot of people know that it's here and, yes, we have a little security issue with it.''

Koulouris defines ``a little security issue,'' as people jumping over the eight-foot walls and evading the guards to try to take the supplies, ``every night.''

``Primarily they're after clothes, water, food, formula, diapers, soap -- those kinds of products,'' he said, ``but while they're there they take other things, also.''

About a week ago the field hospital that is so accustomed to handling victims of a natural disaster suffered a calamity of its own. During a thunderstorm, lightning struck the facility twice.

Such are the hazards of being located in an open field.

The strikes fried power panels and smoke began billowing from the lights. The staff had to evacuate patients as the possibility of fire threatened.

``Out in the parking lot we kept 120 patients outside all night long while we removed all the electrical wire and disconnected the generators,'' Koulouris said. ``During the night at around 3 in the morning we got some lights back so we took the babies on the ventilators over there. With the help of the army and navy we've been rewiring ever since. The operating room came back on line only four days ago.''

NEVER FORGET
The goal is to soon move this hospital to a more permanent facility. But that move won't necessarily signal the return of normalcy to Haiti.

``The problem is the earthquake is starting to fade to the back of people's minds,'' Hill said while waiting for the charter flight home. ``People who aren't here tend to forget and start to think things are back to normal. But if that's what they're thinking they need to see this place.

``The situation here is far from being OK.''