haiti update - january 27, 2010

“For the Lord will rebuild Zion and appear in his glory. He will respond to the prayer of the destitute; he will not despise their plea.” Psalm 103:16,17

The last couple of weeks have been a race against time. We have been racing to help and find injured people. The devastation caused by the earthquake is incredible and this translates into many dead and even more injured. It is estimated that 200,000 people died in the earthquake and 500,000 people injured. Missions everywhere have been focusing on finding and helping the injured. We give the Lord thanks that my cousin Jeff Bultje, sister Tanya, Teresa, Marlene and Dr. Karen McCarthy’s team all found ways to get to Haiti quickly to help the injured here in our area. It was a high paced effort by everybody and rewarding to see people getting help. Nobody was spared by this earthquake, from infants to the elderly. We held 4 clinic days here at Coram Deo and 1 mobile clinic in the Petionville area.
The Haitian people are enduring and strong. A woman who had a severe burn to her arm refused to go the hospital for further treatment because she wouldn’t leave her children. She has 4 children and was living with them in a refuge camp in our area. Instead she allowed Dr. Karen to debride her arm without being under general anesthetic as would have been done in the United States or Canada. A young boy endured the pain of a broken hip for almost 2 weeks before his parents brought him to the clinic. He was one of the people who we sent to Fond Parisien where the Love a Child mission is located. They had a triage area there for surgery. Thanks to their efforts he will get his hip/leg surgically repaired.
My cousin Jeff and another Jeff from the Florida team assisted in transporting all the injured in Kimosabee to several local hospitals. We sent some patients to the University of Miami mobile hospital that was set up at the airport and also the Belgian mobile hospital that was set up on the grounds of Laboratoire National on Delmas 33. Some wounds that were treated were not caused by the earthquake. One man had a gunshot wound that needed care. Another man came in with a badly cut finger caused by an argument with a motorcycle taxi driver when the moto driver slashed him with a knife. A boy came running in with a bleeding head after a fall. All were thankful for the care that they received.
The wound care area of the clinic treated many wounds. Some of the wounds were very infected and it was rewarding for the team to see healing wounds over the clinic days responding to antibiotics and wound cleaning. Tanya, Marlene and Teresa worked with other members of the medical team in that area.
Children from Christian Light School assisted with the translating. Manu was one of the translators helping out in the pharmacy. A person is never too young to help another. We visited the refuge camps in the area searching for untreated injuries and found injuries in every camp we visited. Johnny and Tanya sometimes went out and brought people back in wheelchairs who couldn’t walk to the clinic.
The people on this medical team were very determined. Dr. Karen started feeling sick and dizzy during the mobile clinic in Petionville. She laid down and wrote prescriptions out from a bed and continued on until the clinic day was over.
The team came with a large supply of donated medicines and supplies. People who had diabetes were able to get some insulin pills. Others who had high blood pressure received medication to lower their blood pressure. The international community has responded with a large effort to send in mobile hospitals and set up medical teams in different areas. We even saw mobile tents set up in the middle of streets to provide medical care.
Many amputees have been created. Because of the drastic conditions a lot of the mobile hospitals are doing “cut and chop” for serious injuries as there are no facilities and personnel to monitor recuperation of complex orthopedic surgeries. We sent our most difficult orthopedic cases out to Fond Parisien and they were then sent on to the Dominican Republic with the hope that they wouldn’t have a “cut and chop” surgery. The future for all these amputees will be very difficult if they don’t receive prostheses. We will be trying to find care we hope for some of them. Pray for new missions to be established here in Haiti for prostheses. There are only 2 right now here in Port-au-Prince; Healing Hands and St. Vincents. Pray for all missions working in Haiti who are striving to help the Haitian people. There is so much to write about. I’ll write about it in sections. There are many photos too to explain the “story” of what is going on here in Haiti. You can find them on my blog.
That’s all the news for today. Have a good week.
Karen Bultje, Coram Deo.