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Working In Haiti 1: Vince De Gennaro ’98 (left) and Alex Cottin ’99 (right) in Haiti 2: Street view of the earthquake’s devastation 3: A homemade sign requesting help. 4: De Gennaro helping a local resident.
Vince De Gennaro Shares His Experience n Having been to Haiti twice before, I can tell you that the conditions there were awful before the earthquake, and that may color the way the media who haven’t been there before perceive it. I was able to travel throughout most of the city without security or road issues, but I did not go to the hardest hit part of Cité de Soleil. I worked with Project Medishare, which is an NGO started by University of Miami physicians in 1994 and has run medical clinics and built hospitals in the rural central plateau in partnership with Partners in Health. The Project Medishare hospital consisted of two tents on the United Nation’s base and one corner was sectioned off for an “OR.” The “operating room” was two tables cordoned off by partitions. They performed mostly amputations for the first three days and were doing 25 surgeries a day, although the care had switched to more limb-saving operations at that point. They were amputating limbs using the same leather belt as a tourniquet on everyone. There was a CNN reporter who lived with us in the tents, and you can watch her videos (which has a shot of me in the back wearing scrub top and khaki shorts) at: http://www.cnn.com/ video/#/video/health/2010/01/19/cohen. amputation.supplies.cnn?iref=allsearch I went to another hospital for two days that is a real hospital. They had two operating rooms going 24 hours a day with orthopods sleeping in shifts. I worked in triage, pre-op and post-op, and functioned as an ER doc, pediatrician, nurse, psychiatrist, and physical therapist. The mortality at the two hospitals was 2-3 patients per day, which is roughly 1-2% of the 200-300 total patients. Everyone had supplies, but not always the right ones. The Project Medishare hospital had pain meds and antibiotics and lots of doctors, but poor facilities. The community hospital had ORs, a lab, and an x-ray, but they didn’t have good antiobiotics, and they didn’t have pain meds. They were giving Tylenol for postop pain to the amputees. I brought them a large box of meds from the Project Medishare hospital and spent my nights dispens-
ing IV pain meds in the post-op rooms. The community hospital sent Project Medishare patients to be evacuated to Miami. Project Medishare sent patients to the community hospital to get x-rays and labs. They also sent nurses, doctors, and supplies. There was an Israeli hospital that had ventilators, so we sent them a baby who was intubated but who volunteers spent 10 hours bagging before they reached a ventilator. The Israeli hospital had ventilators, x-rays, and a neonatal intensive care unit, but was located in a hard-to-get-to part of town, so Project Medishare funneled their sickest patients to them. There were literally times when we would trade patients; when a car came to drop one off, we gave them one to take back. The most inspiring thing for me was this spirit of cooperation. During my four days, I worked with paramedics, nurses, and doctors from Korea, France, Hungary, and Portugal. There were Jamaican army soldiers and Bolivian UN soldiers providing security for the two hospitals. People worked 1824-hour days and never stopped moving. They gave away supplies, free rides, traded patients, and gave away food and water – all in the name of helping the Haitian people. On my last morning, the “aftershock,” a 6.1 magnitude, woke me up after an hour-and-a-half of sleep. The patients were screaming with such terror that I have never heard before. They began evacuating themselves, and the medical staff then joined in when we saw that the whole hospital was going to leave no matter what. We evacuated almost 300 patients and every single piece of furniture in 15 minutes. Then we moved the pharmacy and supplies outside; and within 45 minutes of the quake, we were back at work treating the patients. They were so frightened we had to convince the patients whose turn it was in the OR to actually go inside. Thanks for listening to my own therapeutic ramblings. Peace, Vince Pine Crest Magazine Spring 2010
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