Haiti needs Doctors, Medical Supplies

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Re: Haiti needs Doctors, Medical Supplies

LeBonheur to Help Haitian Children

Updated: Friday, 29 Jan 2010, 5:27 AM MST
By JILL MONIER, MyFox Memphis

(MEMPHIS, Tenn.) ? A team of pediatric surgeons from Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center are gearing up to head to Haiti. Their hope is to help children, injured in the earthquake, before infection or permanent damage sets in.

The doctors are leaving this weekend and will be in Haiti for two weeks. Many of the surgeons in the group have been in disaster situations before.

This trip is taking some careful planning and they're getting help from some of Memphis' biggest businesses.

Tuesday, a group of people worked to pack and load medical supplies and food for a team of Le Bonheur physicians going to help in Haiti. Dr. Sunny Anand, the Director of Critical Care at the hospital, is heading the team, "the situation in Haiti is really awful and it's going from bad to worse."

Three pediatric surgeons, two anesthesiologists and a number of physicians and support staff from Le Bonheur, are going with Dr. Anand. They'll be working out of the Haiti Medical Missions of Memphis clinic near Port-Au-Prince. It's the first mission focused on helping children.
Dr. Anand says, "When we look at disaster response systems, not just in Haiti but across the world, they're mostly set up for adults, people don't think about children."

It's a race against time. Dr. Anand says children are particularly vulnerable to infection and are not getting adequate medical care.

Dr. Anand says, "Their wounds are getting infected, not being bandaged, fractures not being dealt with properly."

Read more at:
http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpps/he...elp-haitian-children-memphis-20100129_5839838

 

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Re: Haiti needs Doctors, Medical Supplies

Doctors plead for medical supplies in Haiti

Last Updated: Friday, January 29, 2010 | 10:12 PM ET
CBC News

Excerpts:

"Doctors treating injured victims of the earthquake in Haiti made an urgent appeal Friday for basic medicines.

Doctors are warning of a public health calamity as injured survivors go without proper treatment, said Elisabeth Byrs of the United Nations humanitarian co-ordination office in Geneva."

"At the Bernard Mevs Hospital near the Port-au-Prince airport, administrator Kathleen Sejour said supplies of gloves, gauze, antiseptic, malaria medicine and treatments for amputees are all in short supply.

"There are too many patients we're seeing who have malaria," said Sejour. "Most of the kids right now have it."

Not every group providing medical aid is in need of aid. Doctors Without Borders and the International Federation of the Red Cross said they have adequate supplies.

Laurie Graham of CBC News said that without painkillers or antibiotics, there?s a great concern for infection. Medical professionals are concerned about disease spreading within the tent cities that have sprouted up across Haiti, she said.

"People are crowded in together," she said. "This is where they eat, sleep, go to the bathroom in all the same space, so the medical community is concerned about infectious disease. There's a lot of worry about what might happen in the weeks and months ahead."

"So that?s why doctors and volunteers are appealing for more medication here in Haiti as quickly as possible."


Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/01/29/haiti-medical-supplies-shortage.html#ixzz0e3tZiXuv

 

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Re: Haiti needs Doctors, Medical Supplies

Stanford Doctors Return From Haiti's "Apocalypse"
Emergency doctors and nurses spent two weeks in Port-au-Prince

By KIM TERE and OWEN THOMAS
Updated 2:40 PM PST, Sun, Jan 31, 2010

Excerpts:

"We came into a scene that was pretty much straight out of the apocalypse," said Dr. Paul Auerbach, a professor of surgery on the team.

"We came to a city where people were swarming over walls. We heard gunshots. It was totally beyond what i expected or could prepare for."
Prepared or not, the emergency-room doctors and nurses went in and got to work.

"We faced approximately 800 critically ill or injured people, amputations, infected wounds, a lot of death and dying," said Auerbach.
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"When we got there, things were very rough, there were very few doctors, very few supplies," said Ian Brown, another doctor on the team.

"The last day, I finished my responsibilities and said, 'You know, I just don't feel too good,' and then i got 9 liters of IV fluids so I could get up to go to the UN plane," said Auerbach. "But everybody was like that."

The Haitians' gratitude kept up their spirits and formed lasting memories.

"I went up to a child that had one hand left and he was eating a cracker and he handed it up to me to eat," said Auerbach. "I talked to a woman who had been a professional ballet dancer. I saw her every day and I told her she would dance better on one leg than i would ever dance on two legs. We all have stories like that."

Read more at:
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/loca...s-Return-From-Haitis-Apocalypse-83203187.html

 

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Re: Haiti needs Doctors, Medical Supplies

Doctor speaks about recent experience working in Haiti

By Emily Wilkins (Last updated: 1 hour ago)

Excerpts:

?I?m a physician,? Coupet said. ?We?ve been trained to be able to see certain things and tolerate certain things, but what happened in Haiti, I don?t think anyone is trained for that. I don?t think any physician is trained to tolerate the devastation that we saw.?

"Although Coupet said a single image can?t convey the full effect of the Haitian crisis, he described crushed bodies, the human limbs sticking out of the rubble and the smell of rotten corpses."

?We now have the ears of the international community,? Coupet said. ?But when you look six months down the line when the smoke clears, where do the people stand? ? We need to begin to focus how we are going to address the long-term effects.?


Read more at:
http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2010/01/doctor_speaks_about_recent_experience_working_in_haiti

 

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Re: Haiti needs Doctors, Medical Supplies

Houma surgeon rallies medical team bound for Haiti

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By Naomi King
Staff Writer

Published: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 10:57 a.m.

HOUMA ? A team of Houma medical professionals, led by plastic surgeon Mark Peters, will embark on a medical mission trip to Haiti next week

Peters organized the trip ? his first medical mission ? to help earthquake victims who require reconstructive surgeries.

Roughly 200,000 were killed and an estimated 300,000 were hurt, many by collapsed buildings.

The six-member medical team will prepare amputated arms and legs for prosthetics and repair facial injuries at a hospital in Port-au-Prince. They leave Feb. 27 and return March 6.

?Plastic surgery is the busiest service in the whole hospital,? Peters, 46, said. ?All the acute problems have been resolved. And now we?re just taking care of the initial procedures, the reconstruction.?

Helping with the surgeries is nurse practitioner Chantel Charpentier, anesthetist Ernie Theriot and nurses Debbie Gill, Carol Haydel and Mary Plaisance.

It only took a day to gather the volunteers, he said, who he knew through their mutual associations at Physicians Medical Center on Corporate Drive in Houma.

More at:
http://www.houmatoday.com/article/2...-surgeon-rallies-medical-team-bound-for-Haiti

 

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Re: Haiti needs Doctors, Medical Supplies

Triangle doctors headed to Haiti

Saturday, February 20, 2010

RALEIGH (WTVD) -- A team of doctors from more than a half dozen hospitals and clinics across the Triangle are headed north of the disaster zone.

The 13 member team is headed for Sacred Heart Hospital (Hopital Sacre Coeur) in Milot, Haiti.

The team consists of orthopedic surgeons, a general surgeon, operating room nurses, anesthetists, anesthesiologists and physical therapists.

"We're going to be there for seven days," Duke Raleigh Anesthesiology Dr. Don Edmondson said. "We have everything in these bags from simple dressings, sutures to anesthetics."

Ready for the mission in Haiti where needs change daily from fatal infections to amputations.

"In Haiti we're told that an amputation is very much a death sentence," Edmondson said.

Edmondson is joined by a group of nine other doctors, nurses and physical therapists.

They represent Duke Raleigh, Rex, UNC, Durham Regional and several clinics in the Triangle.

"The hospital that we're going to which is a 70 bed hospital is now taking care of nearly 400 patients is also just running into all of the issues that you have in a 400 bed hospital."

"I think most of us are just ready to help out and I'm sure it will be everything from helping do a C-section to changing dressings." general surgeon Dr. Lewis Stocks said.



Read more at:http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=7288123

 

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Re: Haiti needs Doctors, Medical Supplies

What happens to Haiti when 'the good doctors' leave?

Emergency medical workers are becoming the de facto healthcare system for a country that has long failed to care for its own. Soon, a ragged health network could be left largely on its own again.

<TABLE cellSpacing=0><TBODY><TR><TD>

Dr. Fred Martin of Chicago's Cook County Hospital treats Anderson Dierdonn, who was injured in an accident unrelated to the quake. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)


</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>By Joel Rubin
March 7, 2010

Reporting from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti - The line of patients at this city's battered General Hospital forms early. The sick come to be seen by "the good doctors."

At 10 on a recent morning, Jean Fenisto Joseph, 58, and his 28-year-old daughter, Roselord, were two of the several hundred Haitians standing or sitting on benches -- a tightly packed crowd of people sweating silently under a Caribbean sun that had already pushed temperatures into the 90s. The pair had been waiting for about five hours, they said, and had at least another hour to go.

Like most in line that day, the father and daughter had not suffered any injuries in the earthquake that laid waste to Port-au-Prince in January. Instead, both complained of general aches and pains, describing the symptoms of common colds.

"I know the good doctors are here. I came to get some of the good help," said Joseph, speaking quietly through an interpreter. "I would have stayed home if it was like before."

In the wake of the 7.0 temblor that leveled much of Port-au-Prince and other communities in Haiti, a massive influx of emergency medical aid arrived to tend to the thousands of people injured. Doctors, nurses and medical supplies from more than 200 different medical organizations, by one estimate, descended on the island nation.

Now, however, the immediate medical crisis is over. The vast majority of victims in need of surgery, amputation or other life-saving interventions have been treated. The foreign doctors and nurses are still swamped, however, spending an increasing amount of time and supplies treating regular ailments not related to the earthquake.

They are becoming the de facto healthcare system for a country that has long failed to care for its own.

That reality has started a delicate and uncomfortable conversation among aid groups and Haitian health authorities over the inevitability that, in the weeks and months to come, much of the foreign medical aid will depart. Efforts are already underway to persuade wealthy donor nations to fund nascent plans for training a new generation of Haitian medical professionals and spend the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to build appropriate facilities.

In the face of so much need, however, such talks have been slow to gain traction, medical aid experts say, leaving many with the unsettling notion that Haiti's ragged network of clinics and hospitals could soon be left largely on its own again.

"Access to healthcare in Haiti has been an issue for as long as anyone can remember," said Hans van Dillen, head of mission of the Dutch chapter of Doctors Without Borders, which has provided medical services in Haiti for much of the last 15 years. "At the moment, Haiti is flooded with help -- the whole humanitarian circus is here. Most came with no planning horizon and will soon leave. And then what? We'll try, but it won't be enough. In that respect, we'll be back to square one."

Full text at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-haiti-depend7-2010mar07,0,6411166.story