ARTICLE - DOCTOR GETS LOOK AT CONFLICT

ENGLEWOOD DOCTOR GETS CLOSE LOOK AT HAITI CONFLICT
(NorthJersey.com) - By Joseph Ax, The Record, Staff Writer

For the last few days, Englewood doctor Joshua Hyman and his colleagues at the Bernard Mevs Hospital in Port-au-Prince have treated patients in the emergency room to a new soundtrack: the cacophony of gunfire, chants and machetes banging against the pavement that has filled the streets of this city.

The angry protests — which erupted Tuesday night when preliminary presidential election results were announced — have also delivered victims of the violence to the hospital, including stabbing and gunshot victims.

"They were marching in large crowds, chanting, some of them holding guns, lighting fires in the streets," Hyman said Thursday from the earthquake-ravaged city, where he is spending a week working with the non-profit Project Medishare to provide medical care to Haitians.

Hyman, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon at New York-Presbyterian Children's Hospital, said he and the other staff are safe. The hospital has security staff and is well liked in the community.

Nevertheless, the protests have forced non-governmental organizations to cease their work, and the hospital has shut its clinics because much of the Haitian staff is unable to get there due to the makeshift barricades erected in the streets.

The election results — widely questioned by both Haitians and critics in the international community — set up a runoff election between former first lady Mirlande Manigat and Jude Célestin, the protégé of current President René Préval.

"People are very angry," Hyman said. "They're very frustrated. What's interesting is that I have not been able to find one person who is genuinely a supporter of Célestin. The more I hear about it, the more I think the election was rigged."

The popular singer Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly, whom independent observers had expected to beat out Célestin, was barely edged out, setting off violent demonstrations that have effectively shut down the city. The airport remains closed, raising the possibility that Hyman and the other Medishare volunteers will not be able to leave on Saturday as scheduled.

The Haitian government announced Thursday it would initiate a review of the election results.

In the meantime, the emergency room at the hospital has remained open, and doctors are treating a mixture of routine emergency cases and Haitians injured in physical confrontations.

Hyman has seen several Haitians who had been shot with rubber bullets, in addition to more serious injuries.

Hyman said he thinks the protests reflect not just anger over the election results, but deep dissatisfaction with the pace of recovery since the Jan. 12 earthquake.

And the unrest is hamstringing an already flawed medical infrastructure. On Wednesday, Hyman and the hospital staff treated a woman with diabetes and renal failure who required dialysis. The woman was transported to the General Hospital, since Bernard Mevs doesn't have a dialysis machine, but no doctors were at the hospital because of the protests.

The woman died, Hyman said.

"I don't think in the 11 months since I left that it has changed very much," he said of conditions in the city. "There's still rubble on the sidewalks. People are living in tents outside. There are still collapsed buildings. When I speak to people here, they say it isn't much different than it was right after the earthquake. That's part of the frustration."