The author inserts an IV into a the arm of cholera patient.
On January 12, 2010, a catastrophic earthquake devastated Haiti. 300,000 people were killed or injured and 1.6 million more were left homeless. The United Nations, Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), and church groups rushed to help and discovered a shocking reality – the country’s own government had abandoned its people. The Good News-Paper Columnist BJ Hill recently traveled to Haiti, thanks to a grant from Spirit of Hope. This is the second in a series of articles on his experience.
“We have a bird leaving at noon, can you be on it?” Paul Sebring, co-founder of MMRC, was on my cell phone. He was asking if I could meet the helicopter which would fly us to a remote region of Haiti to fight a cholera outbreak.
I was volunteering in Port-Au-Prince as a computer specialist with Habitat for Humanity (see January’s issue), but on the weekends I had the opportunity to help with a small non-profit called Materials Management Relief Corps. MMRC is a tiny charity begun by Paul Waggoner (Little Paul) and Paul Sebring (Big Paul), two Americans in their early 30’s who arrived after the earthquake to help any way they could. In the last year, their résumés include responding to car accidents, delivering medical supplies to hospitals, and housing international medical teams.
Today we were headed to Borgne, a small town facing a large epidemic. Cholera had come to Haiti a few months prior by way of a United Nations contingent. Left untreated, it causes severe diarrhea, vomiting, and can kill within hours. Cholera normally isn’t deadly – it can be treated with frequent rehydration and avoided altogether by handwashing – but in a country where basic sanitation and public health education is not universal, this highly infectious disease took root.
Ironically, it was a U.N. helicopter which whisked us to the north coast of the island. Sitting in the cargo hold was Big Paul, myself, an EMT from Massachusetts, Jeannie, a recent nursing school graduate, and our interpreter Junior, a Haitian who had grown up in New York City. Stashed behind us were our backpacks of shorts and t-shirts and about 2500 lbs. of medical supplies.
Dozens of curious children ran to see us when our chopper touched down on the mountain-hemmed riverbed. Local officials loaded our equipment onto pickup trucks and drove us to the green, concrete hospital. There we found three Haitian doctors, eight nurses, and 200 patients in a covered shelter about the size of a basketball court. Our plan was simple – keep everyone hydrated. We pushed mineral-laden oral rehydration salts (like super-Gatorade), one chug every 30 minutes. If patients couldn’t keep that down, then we started a line and administered fluids intravenously. My job was patrolling the rows of beds, maintaining the IVs and reminding everyone to Bwe Cunye – “drink now.” It was a challenge not being able to speak Creole, but I got by with a little help from my French.
One of the hardest things about working in the clinic was the primitive conditions. Patients shared one large space, sans privacy. The army cots were a luxury, not a right. About half the patients slept on wooden planks, legless wire bedframes without mattresses, or right on the concrete floor. They lie like this for days. Their latrine was a plastic bucket, where they vomited or defecated in the aisles. No one complained. It made me thankful for the standard of care we take for granted in America.
Another challenge was our attempts to accurately count who was sick. Feeding and bathing are the responsibilities of the patient’s family, who stay at their relative’s bedside. Healthy parents cuddled next to their sick children, and vice versa. One night there were three children and two adults sleeping on one folding cot. In such tight, unsanitary conditions one family member would become infected just as the other was on the mend.
I also learned there is no ambulance service in Haiti. Few people are wealthy enough to own or hire a car to take them into town. Some of the cholera victims from the surrounding hills had to walk and stumble for hours to come to the clinic. The closest thing to 9-1-1 was two thin boys trotting by with an elderly man on a board perched on their heads.
We worked around the clock from Thursday afternoon to Monday morning. Unfortunately, we lost some patients, including a child. But by the time we passed care on to the incoming team of volunteers, about 75% of the original two hundred patients were sitting up, drinking, eating, smiling, and preparing for the hike back home.
Coincidentally, a few weeks later I bumped into the mayor of Borgne at the luggage carousel at Miami airport. He told me that soon after we left, the clinic was again overflowing. The body doesn’t build immunization to cholera, so it can re-infect victims, especially if the same unsanitary lifestyle is followed. But public health education would be a task for a later organization.
I was in Haiti for just one month, but I worked in two very different environments – in a huge international NGO (Habitat for Humanity), and in a tiny charity (MMRC). Friends ask me which is better, which is more effective, to which they should donate. I answer, why not support both? I’ve found the large organizations see the big picture and have the resources to implement broad, behind-the-scenes programs like education, training, and research, but sometimes become paralyzed by their own bureaucracy. The smaller groups are the boots on the ground, achieving the quick fix but sometimes only ephemerally. It’s like trying to paint a masterpiece with only a thick brush or a thin brush – you need both. I’ve worked with dedicated, passionate people in both organizations. At the end of the day, despite their strengths and weaknesses, they’re all there to help.
Please see MMRCGlobal.org, MMRCHaiti.org, Habitat.org/Haiti, and SpiritOfHope.org for more information on these exceptional groups and learn how you can donate or volunteer.
In 2008, BJ Hill accomplished a lifelong dream to walk across America, and is always on the lookout for stories of people pursuing their goals and making the world a better place. When he’s not writing, he’s managing the computers for a non-profit social service agency in Worcester, Mass. Follow me at WalkAmerica2008.com: Bringing the voice of the people to our next president
