"Saving lives with just the tools at hand; No water, no power as surgical mission starts in on the endless line of need" by Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff | January 17, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Haiti’s General Hospital, crippled by Tuesday’s earthquake, had only a skeleton staff of volunteers, dwindling supplies, and a makeshift operating room that sprang into action yesterday for the first time since the devastating 7.0-magnitude quake.
A small team of surgeons, a nurse, and an anesthesiologist from Massachusetts, Florida, and California had no electricity, no water, and only a hacksaw to remove part of a woman’s leg. They had flown in the day before and grabbed three hours’ sleep on the operating room floor....
But we got glimmers of hope around here somewhere.
The incomprehensibly long line of people who filled the 700-plus bed hospital’s darkened wards spilled into the courtyard outside in a caravan of sheet-covered gurneys....
They began with a simple case of a woman who had lost her foot, and needed a partial amputation to create a stump.... An anesthesiologist prepared to put her to sleep, then Georges Boutin held the woman’s leg as his daughter sawed the bone with a handsaw.
Oh!
Outside, a woman cried and called for her mother. With the amputation successfully underway, other doctors went to get a patient to be treated in an adjoining room. Seconds later, they wheeled in a frightened 7-year-old, Balnave Ulysse, wearing a yellow soccer jersey. He had lost one foot. His father was dead, but his anxious mother waited outside. They tried to soothe him. “Can you tell him he’ll feel a poke?’’ Dr. Patrick Shanovich of Los Angeles asked a translator as the boy sobbed.
Jacques Lorblanches, a 64-year-old doctor with Medecins du Monde, a nonprofit based in France, stood in the operating room and said Haiti was the worst disaster scene he had ever seen. He worked in Iran after a massive earthquake in 2004. But unlike Haiti, he said, Iran had many well-equipped hospitals.
No way!
When he arrived in Iran shortly after the disaster, the critical cases had already been triaged, and many hospitals were available. In Haiti, they are rebuilding the hospital themselves....
“It’s much worse here,’’ he said. “We have no radio, no electricity, no nothing.’’
***************Reminders of the life-or-death stakes were everywhere. The stench of death from the nearby morgue hung in the air. Hundreds of bodies were piled on top of one another in front of the morgue, and the street was slick with blood. Relatives picked through the bodies and pulled some out to bring home. More bodies piled up on the street outside the hospital.
In the courtyard, survivors held on, cared for by relatives or by strangers.
How LITTLE EMPHASIS that gets as opposed to looters, 'eh?
I guess that's because Haitian looters don't wear nice suits and work for banks.
Many victims had waited in line so long they had grown dehydrated and needed intravenous fluids before they could undergo surgery. “It’s a catastrophe. It’s a human disaster,’’ Georges Boutin said. “Just the smell alone. Have you ever smelled death before?’’
Makes you vomit!
"Frustration amid aid gridlock; Damage slows distribution of food, help" by Ginger Thompson and Damien Cave, New York Times | January 17, 2010
Russian rescuers freed Senvilo Ovri, 11, from rubble in Port-Au-Prince yesterday. (Tatyana Makeyeva/Reuters)
RUSSIAN rescuers? Haven't heard much about them, either!
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - As the focus yesterday began turning away from Haitians lost to those who were spared, a sprawling assembly of international officials and aid workers struggled to fix a troubled relief effort after Tuesday’s devastating earthquake.
While countries and relief agencies have showered aid on Haiti, little of it is reaching increasingly desperate Haitians who lack food, clean water, or shelter. And there were reports of intensifying looting and violence, particularly around aid distribution points.
There goes the NYT again.
The worst violence to date broke out in a warehouse district in central Port-au-Prince, where at least 1,000 rioters with makeshift weapons fought over whatever goods they could loot from shuttered houses and shops. Witnesses said the police left as things got worse.
Now when I read this, I begin to wonder if the NYT hasn't turned the whole thing inside out.
Did Haitians CHASE AWAY POLICE or U.N. LOOTERS?
The problems, aid officials say, stem in part from the best of intentions.
They truly do pave the road to hell, huh?
Countries around the world have responded to Haiti’s call for help as never before. And they are flooding the country with supplies and relief workers that its collapsed infrastructure and nonfunctioning government are in no position to handle. Haitian officials instead are relying on the United States and the United Nations, but coordination is posing a critical challenge, aid workers said. An airport hobbled by only one runway, a ruined port whose main pier splintered into the ocean, roads blocked by rubble, widespread fuel shortages, and a lack of drivers to move the aid into the city are compounding the problems.
Excuses, excuses, excuse.
Across Port-au-Prince, hunger and thirst were on the rise.... About 1,700 people camped on the grass in front of the prime minister’s office compound in the Petionville neighborhood, pleading for biscuits and water-purification tablets distributed by aid groups. Haitian officials said tens of thousands of victims had already been buried. A Red Cross estimate put the total number of affected people at 3.5 million. President Obama said yesterday that former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton would lead a national drive to raise money to help the survivors. “Presidents Bush and Clinton will help the American people to do their part, because responding to disaster is the work of all of us,’’ he said.
Makes me sick.
Yesterday afternoon, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived here on a military cargo jet....
Oh, well, situation solved.
Even as the United States took a leading role in aid efforts, some aid officials were describing misplaced priorities, accusing US officials of focusing their efforts on getting their people and troops installed and lifting their citizens out. The United States is managing air traffic control at the airport, helicopters are flying relief missions from warships off the coast, and 9,000 to 10,000 troops are expected to arrive by tomorrow to help with the relief effort.
Yeah, whatever happened, this was about occupation.
The World Food Program finally was able to land flights of food, medicine, and water yesterday, after failing Thursday and Friday, an official with the agency said. Those flights had been diverted so that the United States could land troops and equipment, and lift Americans and other foreigners to safety. “There are 200 flights going in and out every day, which is an incredible amount for a country like Haiti,’’ said Jarry Emmanuel, the air logistics officer for the agency’s Haiti effort. “But most of those flights are for the United States military.’’
Not only that, all the military spending is counted as "aid."
He added: “Their priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to feed. We have got to get those priorities in sync.’’ US officials said they were making substantial progress. Clinton said the military was beginning to use a container port in Cap Haitien, which should increase the flow of aid....
Yet problems remain....
Fuel shortages were mounting....
Some aid workers were critical of the United Nations, as well, arguing that the agency had the most on-the-ground experience in Haiti and should be directing efforts better. But many UN employees were killed in the earthquake. Yesterday, the body of Haiti mission chief Hedi Annabi was found in the rubble of its headquarters in Port-au-Prince.
Nothing about the Chinese help, 'eh, NYT?
Stephanie Bunker, spokeswoman for the UN humanitarian relief effort, said a UN logistics team was trying to coordinate with other agencies, and that the peacekeeping forces were trying to clear roads. Criticism of the United Nations “may reflect people’s frustrations with the entire effort because it is such a grueling effort,’’ she said. “It takes a long time for all this stuff to be cleared up and fixed.’’ She noted that all modes of transportation - air, road, and sea - were still limited. A crippling shortage of trucks remained a problem.
Michel Chancy, appointed by President Rene Preval to coordinate relief, said that much of the aid flowing into Haiti was flooding in to a government that was itself under siege.
“The palace fell,’’ he said. “Ministries fell. And not only that, the homes of many ministers fell. The police were not coming to work. Relief agencies collapsed. The UN collapsed. It was hard to get ourselves in a place where we could help others.’’
And it was corrupt as hell before that!
At the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince, US rescue teams continued to roll out of the gate. Most of their equipment had arrived, and at any given time, the teams were working on several different piles of rubble throughout the city.
“People need to get the message, we’re out, we’re doing stuff,’’ said Craig Luecke, a coordinator with the search and rescue team from Fairfax County, Va. Though the numbers are fluid, he said four US teams had helped pulled nearly two dozen survivors from the rubble.
Preval, speaking at the airport, which has become the effective seat of the Haitian government, urged patience.....
That's something I'm out of.
--more--"
And look who is playing the waiting game:
"Supplies still en route, medical team awaits an enormous task" by Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | January 16, 2010
Sister Elida Vixamar received aid from a Colombian soldier yesterday in Port-au-Prince. The International Medical Surgical Response Team’s cache of medical supplies was to arrive today. (Dina Rudick/ Globe Staff)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - For one more night, they must wait before they can begin their mission in this earthquake-shattered city: to ease suffering, to save lives.....
They have been waiting for a lifetime already -- a lifetime about to end for many.
For the moment, the International Medical Surgical Response Team lacked the sutures and scalpels, the beds and bandages, necessary to do its work. For one more night, they would wait - under the stars at the US Embassy in the capital.
And HOW MANY MORE Haitians DIED?!
“I do think there is frustration, but when you’re in a crisis situation, the biggest thing is being flexible,’’ said Dr. Lynn Black, an internist at Massachusetts General Hospital who is embarking on her first deployment with the disaster response team....
If they are feeling frustration, imagine what the Haitians are feeling!
As the charter plane descended yesterday, the sky was bright, the air heavy.
With the SMELL of DEATH, the WORST SMELL in the WORLD!!!
And the depth of need was profoundly evident, even on the airport apron, in the shadow of the terminal’s cracked facade. There, three nuns, bloodied and broken, awaited transfer to a hospital in the neighboring Dominican Republic. The nuns, who belong to the Daughters of Mary order, were crushed when their convent collapsed. Others - many others, one nun said - were left for dead in the rubble. A Colombian soldier clasped the hand of a nun in training. Next to her, a nun clad in light blue habit and white veil held an intravenous bag tethered to a nun whose hip appeared broken.
Sister Lucie Sanon was in another building when the quake hit and emerged unscathed. Yesterday, she helped the other nuns from her order clamber into an ambulance, praying they would escape the devastation of Haiti. “That’s not God who has done this,’’ said Sanon, her face serene. “That’s the earth. We must have faith.’’
ABSOLUTELY NOT, but you are approaching Rush and Robertson territory by even mentioning it!
As she spoke, hulking airplanes lumbered on the tarmac, some disgorging supplies, others preparing to ferry people trapped in Haiti since the earthquake struck Tuesday. A contingent of bright-eyed young women who had traveled from Chicago to help open a clinic, sat in a queue for their turn to board a plane. Their first days in Haiti - before the quake - were spent treating routine maladies. “We went from fungus and scabies,’’ said 26-year-old Heather Vruggink, “to limbs blown off and major head wounds.’’
It was a foreshadowing of what the surgical response team appeared likely to encounter.
Before leaving Atlanta, the deputy commander of the squad stood in a hotel room, reminding team members that they would soon be practicing their trade on unfamiliar medical terrain.
“Remember,’’ said Phil Nix, a physician assistant from Miami, “the standard of care we’re going to provide is not what we’re used to in the United States.’’
Eleven hours later, Nix and the other 49 members of the disaster medical team found themselves in the beds of rumbling white dump trucks. The trucks gingerly exited the airport in a convoy, snaking past shards of homes before arriving at the imposing and intact US Embassy.
Today, they were told, their supplies would arrive. And their work could begin.
--more--"Okay, let's see:
"Medical teams from Mass. endure waiting game; Local doctors, nurses in place, not their gear" by Stephen Smith and Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | January 17, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Three days after being summoned to treat Haiti’s broken and battered, and 24 hours after landing, medical rapid response teams from Massachusetts had not treated a single patient yesterday.
The cavalry had arrived, but without its ammunition - everything from blood and drugs to scalpels and sutures. Their frustration at logistical delays was palpable.
Dawn brought hopeful news....
That was 9 a.m. Six hours later, they were still waiting for a Department of Defense security escort before they could depart for a soccer field in the heart of this wounded, desperate city. There, they are supposed to erect a field hospital....
A second group, with a heavy contingent of elite Boston trauma surgeons, nurses, and others specialized in critical care, remained at the embassy. Known as the International Medical Surgical Response Team, its mobile operating room and other supplies had not arrived as expected at 6 a.m. Crossword puzzles were worked and books read as the minutes slowly passed.
And as Haitians slowly suffer and die.
Medical shipments from around the world were delayed yesterday, including an “inflatable hospital’’ being flown from France by the charity Doctors Without Borders. “The major difficulty here is the bottleneck at the airport, which has turned away a number of vital cargo flights,’’ the group said.... France and Brazil both lodged official complaints that the US military had denied landing permission to relief flights from their countries.
Haven't seen or heard much about that; it's all good!
The US Air Force, which took over operations at the airport midday Friday, is in charge of allotting landing and takeoff times for the growing number of international aid flights, military transports, and other government aircraft headed for Haiti.
Took it over from the FAA, huh?
Its operations center at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona was trying to sequence a total of 90 flights yesterday - nearly four times more than the average that touched down daily, before the quake, on Port-au-Prince’s single runway. US commanders on the ground have been giving priority to military flights but also to civilian aircraft carrying water, health and medical supplies, and food, Colonel Bryan Bearden, director of operations, said in a phone interview. But the airport is stretched beyond its limits. At one point there were 16 planes with water waiting for permission to land....
In determining the landing order, there are many considerations. One of numerous planes carrying medical cargo but no doctors would probably get lower priority than, say, an Israeli medical team that arrived simultaneously in two planes that included both personnel and the supplies for a 500-bed field hospital, Bearden said.
Yeah, they have to work the great Israeli angle in, too.
Why didn't they turn around and go to Gaza?
Other calculations include ensuring that adequate personnel are available to quickly off-load the supplies and get them out to those who need them, according to Beardon, and that there is a security plan to protect supply convoys from attacks by gangs or desperate victims “outside the wire.’’ Freaky term.
What's next, concentration camps for the Haitians?
At mid-day, the airport was a hub of commotion, planes groaning on the narrow runway, bearing the flags of countries from around the globe, and disgorging supplies. Another aircraft landed or departed every few minutes.... At 3 p.m., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed. She shook hands and waved, but made no statement.
Yup, just a BIG PHOTO OP for Hitlery!
She was beyond eyeshot of the Massachusetts medical team, which remained on the airport apron, resting on sleeping bags and backpacks, faces etched in tedium. At midafternoon, word came that the supplies for the surgical response team would arrive in Haiti by last evening.
In Washington, Gretchen Michaels, a spokeswoman at the Department of Health and Human Services, which sponsored the team, confirmed the aircraft took off from Martinsburg, W. Va., late in the day. She was hopeful it would get clearance to land.
Back in Port-au-Prince, no one assumed that was a sure thing.
--more--"