The Flood

Our only inkling of any weather at all was in the evening- 5 minutes of rapid pattering on the roof.

In the morning, our drive to Dafourt told a different story.

Along the drive in the morning traffic was backed up along the road. What should have taken 30 minutes to get to our remote clinic took over an hour.

Buildings had water 1/3 the way up their doors. Police blocked off the roads and redirected the already chaotic morning traffic. Later we would discover several people in the tent cities surrounding our neighborhood had drowned during flash flooding in their sleep.

All from 5 minutes of rain.

We continued on to our clinic, today held in an open air church and saw our patients. Many smiling faces and many children. Sue had brought inflatable balls with her from the United States, gifts from her company. The children saw us inflating them before clinic and were so excited they could hardly sit through their exams.

Just before noon we had word from our driver that there was a lot of restlessness brewing in town and that we should get back immediately. The people, frustrated with frequent flooding in the area, were now demonstrating against the government for lack of a response by burning tires and blocking the roads. There was concern that if we did not leave now we would not get back to the Heart to Heart Center by nightfall.

We packed up to the disappointment of the crowd and explained why we needed to leave. We were stopped frequently by backed-up traffic from the demonstrations and roadblocks. Our driver quickly and skillfully negotiated all of these until we stumbled directly on a fresh roadblock.

A group of men had pulled stones onto the dirt road and had dragged a large cart across to block the way. We were concerned until a man recognized our driver who explained who we were and what we were doing there. The roadblocks were removed and we were allowed to pass. We continued in relative ease, relieved to have the worst of the obstacles behind us, and realizing that had we left any later we would certainly have been trapped on the road with few options. We passed many of the UN security details posted to the area, trying to address the needs of the crowd.

We were happy to finally return back to the Heart to Heart Center for the day, early but safe thanks to the quick thinking of our team and the impeccable skills and connections of our great driver.

By the next morning the demonstrations had ended, things were back to relative normal, and there were only puddles on the ground.

-Aaron

Morning News on KWCH/KSCW

We were welcomed on to the morning news to talk about our work with Heart to Heart International and the remaining needs of Haiti this morning.

Video is available here.

-Aaron

Haiti Stands With Japan

via RYOT.org

Fundraising Update

Hi, everyone.

Thanks for visiting and staying up to date on everything going here. We have more stories and many images to share with you coming up.

Despite being back in country, we are still fundraising at this point to cover the expenses of our work in Haiti. Obviously we won't cover every penny we spend, but every cent we raise helps immensely. As many who know us are aware (and those who don't and are new visitors here), Maryclaire and I are resident physicians which means we work on razor thin budgets compared to board-certified doctors. This means we run these missions on margin and the work diligently to make up those expenses.

If you are on the fence about donating, just remember that even $5.00 helps, and that 96-100% of your contribution goes to direct patient care.

A great thanks to all of those who have supported us financially, spiritually, with time, or with resources. Thanks to Heart to Heart International for providing logistics and serving the people of Haiti.

-Aaron & Maryclaire

Rebuilding. Rebalancing.

Seeing all the children make their way to school dressed smartly in uniforms was a sight that spoke to the rebuilding of Haiti post-earthquake. Another was the return of the street markets. Even before the earthquake, only 7% of Haitians worked for an issued paycheck, the rest of those who worked worked in small shops or sold merchandise from the streets. Today you can find just about anything on the street-side markets: food, sodas, shoes, clothes, suitcases, car care items, school supplies, and the list goes on. Though availability of items and ability to pay for them do not go hand in hand in Haiti for most. Even before the earthquake it was the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

No matter what was being sold, chances are high that it was transported in baskets, boxes or bags balanced effortlessly on the heads of the vendor. While we were coming back from clinic one day I marveled at a young boy selling sodas on the street: he danced to the beat of his MP3 player as a dozen bottles kept their place in the box a top his head.

 

A thought that I had more than once was how the common American health complaints of low back pain, neck pain, headaches--all caused or significantly worsened by poor posture--would be significantly less if we all transported things on our heads rather than slung over our shoulders and backs. It is a striking thing actually to look a the posture of the Haitians on the whole. They stand tall. It is rare to see a signinficantly kyphotic (hunch back) posture, even in the elderly.

Léogâne

At 4:53 in the afternoon on January 12 a rumbling in the ground began. It would last for 35 seconds, but in that time 316,000 people would die. Three million people would be affected. 250,00 homes, and 30,000 buildings would be destroyed. Greater than 1,000,000 people would find themselves homeless, and the world would take notice of the poor nation of Haiti during yet another natural disaster.


The epicenter of the earthquake was in Léogâne., one and a half to three hours West of Port au Prince, this is where we would make our home for the first week of arrival. Like Port au Prince the area has picked up considerably over the past year, but the lasting effects of the earthquake are still in every sight.




Our base of operations for the first week was the Heart to Heart Volunteer Center that opened here several weeks ago. Protected by a full wall and gates, the yard also is home to a Hospitals for Hope Clinic In A Can that can provide full power via generator. The clinic has two exam rooms and a pharmacy staffed by a Haitian pharmacist. This clinic is usually run by Dr. Reubens, a Haitian physician employed by Heart to Heart, but on some days other docs will step in to cover the patient visits, like Maryclaire and I did on Thursday.




Across from the center is a small tent city with livestock including cattle and horses roaming and grazing.



Daily, we would leave from the Volunteer Center with cases of meds, and head out to remote areas for open-air clinics with our translators.


We were surprised and overjoyed when we arrived after a long day from Port au Prince to find our good friend Sue sitting at the dinner table waiting for us Monday afternoon, who would share our adventures with us during our trip.




-Aaron

Real Rural Medicine

R

Leogane, a rural town a few hours drive outside Port-au-Prince was the epicenter of the earthquake. For our first week, we stayed at the Heart to Heart volunteer center in Leogane. Each day we'd load the truck with medicines and head out to one of five surrounding communities. One, Fondwa, had a 'clinic in a can', the rest had open-walled churches that functioned as clinic while we were there.

Hand-made decorations in Church in Dufort, Haiti

Every clinic day, regardless of which site we were at, began with a public health service announcement on cholera. This was delivered by our translators. Large brochures in the design of comic book style depicted how to avoid cholera. Cholera is one form of your basic traveler's diarrhea. In industrialized countries, it is rarely fatal. However in Haiti, over 4000 lives have been claimed in the past 5 months. This is a result of many factors, poor living conditions, poor nutritional status, and importantly lack of access to oral rehydration salts and antibiotics. However, public education on proper hygiene will go a long way in decreasing the incidence of cholera.

Public Service Announcement: Cholera

Cholera education

We did treat cholera while there, in children and adults of all ages. We also treated the common US ailments of high blood pressure, diabetes, back pain, common cold. And uncommon ailments from a US perspective: lung parasites, typhoid fever, malaria.

A common cold and a shirt from New Orleans

Well baby

90 years old. Walked miles to the clinic to talk about her arthritis.

This woman had a large goiter for many years.

I drained a quarter sized abscess on her left arm from an post-vaccine infection.

I treated this little guy for cholera.

Well Baby

A unique challange to care in Haiti, among other things is practicing low-tech high-minded medicine. There are no computer databases at your fingertips, no specialists just a phone call away to get a consult with, no fancy diagnositic equipment or immediate lab capability. As we set up clinic in the rural towns, we had just our basic equipment: stethoscope, otoscope (ears), opthalmascope (eyes), blood pressure cuff, suture kit, Sandford antibiotic guide, and international medicine reference book.

My clinic chair.

Aaron explains how to use medicine for asthma