Haiti Revisited

2.14.2010

Our first day at clinic began before our previous day was over. We arrived into Haiti at 8 am after traveling all night, with a quick nap on the Ft Lauderdale airport floor. Shortly after arrival, and clearance of our four large bins of medications through customs, a flatbed Heart to Heart truck delivered us to the Bel Aire clinic at it's opening time of 9 am. Our arrival was like a surreal call shift, where you are up all night, and then take care of patients throughout the morning, though with the twist of starting the shift on a crisp bright New Mexico afternoon and ending the following afternoon in a health clinic on then second floor of a Haitian church overlooking the seaports and the commerce, education and life that has sprung up on the streets, amidst the considerable rubble that remains.

Children in school uniforms and backpacks are a common site now. The basement of the Bel Aire church, even, houses several classrooms filled with studious children of various ages in blue and grey uniforms.

The clinic too is familiar, but improved. There are now two Haitian doctors on staff, and a Haitian nurse who does triage. We have basic laboratory capabilities, and an expanded pharmacy staffed by a Haitian pharmacist. And we have our translators. The same translators we had last year. It was so wonderful to see them! Especially Calixte.

The patients lined up in similar fashion, waiting on pews to be seen. We saw many of the same aliments as last year--general aches and pains, insomnia, reflux--but also cases of more severe illnesses: malaria, strep throat, cholera, surgical hernias, acute renal failure, ulcerated scabies infections, kidney infection. And I had the lab capability to tell a woman, that yes, she was feeling nauseous from pregnancy and got her started on pre-natal vitamins.

It was a busy, tiring, rewarding day that ended with a truck ride to the volunteer center in Leogane. (The city that was the epicenter of the earthquake.) We will spend the next couple days setting up mobile clinics in the surrounding communities.

Bon nuit (good night)
~Mc