Haiti - Girl with Guillain-Barre syndrome airlifted to USA

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http://www.nbaa.org/news/2011/20110114-haiti-business-aviation-rescue.php

One Year After Quake, Business Aviation Still Helping in Haiti
January 14, 2011

Reina, a 12-year-old Haitian girl with the rare Guillain-Barre syndrome, is alive today following a dramatic rescue made possible by a volunteer nurse practitioner in Haiti, a compassionate hospital in Charlotte and a U.S.-based business that offered its business airplane within hours of the call for help.

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Young Reina is now listed in guarded condition in the pediatric intensive care unit of Presbyterian Hemby Children's Hospital in Charlotte, NC, which had volunteered to treat her without cost if others could arrange transportation from Haiti. Volunteer nurse practitioner Barbara McLean in Haiti had arranged for the gratis treatment after seeing the girl's condition worsening as a result of Guillain-Barre syndrome and complications of ventilator support and sepsis. "This girl isn't going to survive here in Haiti," she declared to her co-volunteers. "I'm getting her out of here, somehow!"


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"On January 4, they brought Reina in the back of a pickup truck and placed her on a couch in the aircraft converted to a hospital bed," said Staats. "Our turnaround time was an hour and eight minutes, which in Haiti is nothing short of miraculous." Three hours later, Reina was receiving lifesaving treatment at Hemby Hospital.

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Re: Haiti - Girl with Guillain-Barre syndrome airlifted to USA

http://childrenshospitalblog.org/struggle-and-hope-childrens-staff-reflect-on-the-haitian-earthquake-a-year-later/

?My group arrived the morning after hurricane Tomas and the ensuing Cholera outbreak that reached Port Au Prince. I met Reina on my second day; she was a preteen in the ICU who was thought to have Guillian Barre. Our team was able to wean her from sedation in order to give her intense physical therapy and respiratory ventilation weaning. Physical therapy consisted of constant range of motion and stretches but more importantly, dancing! We danced everyday all day long.

While I shimmied around the ICU, she wiggled whatever she could and smiled around her breathing tube. Since coming home I?ve heard from her and her family sporadically, through email, and around her birthday I sent her an Ipod with music that she liked so she could keep dancing. Despite the language barrier we still keep in touch, and though life has not been easy, I know Reina is still dancing.?

Joy Banks, RN, BSN
Medicine Critical Care program
Children?s Hospital Boston