News
Healing In Haiti
By Judy O'Gorman Alvarez
No flu outbreak or emergency preparedness drill could have prepared the medical workers from our area who volunteered their time, safety and hearts to help the victims of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti.
In February Meridian Health sent two trailers of medical equipment and supplies and a team of four physicians and six nurses, to the devastated country for a week. They worked with The Crudem Foundation, a U.S. nonprofit organization that operates a hospital in Haiti, and Meridian physicians, nurses and staff have donated time and expertise in medical missions every year.
An assortment of medical professionals - plastic surgeons, general internists, physical therapists, anesthetists, nurses and more - worked with an array of tents set up as wards, each holding 34 patients, and their family members. With no running water and hastily rigged outdoor plumbing, the Meridian team performed almost 100 surgeries in less than one week, eating when given the chance and sleeping in tents.
"Because of inadequate nutrition and lack of modern medical facilities, wounds and broken bones heal very slowly, often becoming infected," says Dominick Grosso, D.O., internal medicine, Riverview Medical Center. "Many suffer terribly from raw nerve endings, where limbs have been amputated and pelvic bones have been crushed." The psychological toll is overwhelming because so many people have lost family members. "People have no jobs or any hope for one. They live on $1 or $2 a day and the next meal is uncertain."
When the earthquake struck, Florence Germain, R.N. at Riverview Medical Center, was in the Port-au-Prince airport headed home after burying her father, who had emigrated from Haiti years ago but passed away while visiting his homeland.
Her medical skills were quickly called into action as she helped the injured that came to the airport, and shortly after at the American Embassy where Florence and her family were evacuated.
After safely returning home, Germaine was plagued with feelings of guilt. "My family and I got a chance to leave while so many people were hurt and suffering," she says. (Her family in Haiti was unhurt, as well.) "I wanted to go back and lend a hand.
"Haiti is such a poor country and has had so much tragedy in the past 200 years," says Germaine who welcomed the chance to return to Haiti and whose translating skills proved helpful for the Meridian team. "When you talk to the people, their losses are heartbreaking. But they are grateful for the little things they have - and for the volunteers." Images that stay with her range from the horrors of mass graves to the resilient children singing and playing, despite their injuries.
"Ingenuity and persistence" is one of the assets Kris Rovell R.N. at Riverview Medical Center who was also part of the Meridian team, realized was necessary on the trip. "We were all able to use our experience, knowledge and attitude to help one another work around what appeared to be an impossible situation," according to Rovell, who chronicled the group's travels through her blog. "Improvisation has become our forte," she writes. "Limited supplies change daily... So much of our equipment comes from the high-tech medical world and just doesn't work with what we have here. We have had to cut IV tubing meant for pumps and adapted them for use here."
What balances the sad stories the volunteers heard, were the survivor tales, including a three-month old girl who was found seven days after the earthquake, buried under her parents and three siblings who had been killed. "It is only one of many unbelievable stories we heard, but probably the most miraculous," writes Rovell.
Just days after the quake struck Emmanuella (Emma) Alexis, R.N., at Monmouth Medical Center headed to the island of her birth. "People were dying. I just had to go," she says. The Tinton Falls woman emigrated to the U.S. with her parents and siblings 27 years ago.
As a nurse cross-trained in critical care and psychiatry, Emma Alexis was a welcome asset to the Association of Haitian Physicians and Nurses that sent medical volunteers from New York, New Jersey and Washington.
Throughout the week, she was entrenched in triage, intensive care and post-operative units at a hospital. At one point, an aftershock forced Emma and the volunteers to transfer 600 patients outside in the 100-degree heat for fear of the building collapsing.
Most of the team's medical supplies were still held up at the airport, so there were few medicines, pain relief or even food or water for patients. "We were giving them our own water and protein bars," she says.
When CNN journalist Anderson Cooper came to the area, Emma Alexis made her TV debut - which delighted her children back home - and gave her the chance to tell Cooper of the desperate plight the medical volunteers were facing as they tried to help the wounded. An hour later, medical supplies, food, water and 1,500 soldiers arrived to help transfer the patients back to the hospital.
All the volunteers tell of the harrowing stories they heard. Emma Alexis remembers the paralyzed patient who lost her sister, mother, husband and six-month-old daughter when her house collapsed. "She said the only reason she was alive was because she had gone to buy her baby's diapers when the earthquake happened. Now she is a quadriplegic."
Every year David Alexis, Emma's husband who is a respiratory therapist at St. Michael's hospital in Newark, spends two weeks of his vacation and travels, at his own expense, to his homeland on medical missions with the Gaspov Clerge Foundation. Formed by Haitian medical professionals, the group runs a clinic in the southern part of the country. When his wife returned from her rescue mission, David Alexis left for a two-week relief mission.
Poverty and illness is rampant in Haiti. "If you were there for a month without an earthquake, you would be busy all day and night," he says. But with this mission, they treated some 500 patients a day, many of them suffering from eye, ear, or skin conditions and infections. "They were living in tent cities without clean water or clothes," he says. "These are the secondary problems that result from the earthquake."
David Alexis wore many hats, acting as respiratory therapist, triage personnel, translator and photographer. The group went off the beaten track to find patients in need. "We went into towns and mountains and places where no one has seen these people," he says.
It was the children that distressed the volunteers the most. "There were kids in body casts, lying on the grass," he says. "I knew they should be in orthopedic beds in traction. It breaks your heart."
The suffering is far from over and many groups are still offering help. David Alexis will return to the Gaspov clinic to coordinate distribution of donations. Meridian Health will continue to send medical missions, supplies and equipment to CRUDEM. Medical staff is always welcome, and now in the recovery phase, physical therapists, as well as crutches and prosthetics are greatly needed.
"I would encourage every individual to do something to help out," says Grosso. "Each person has his own individual talents. There are always prayer and of course monetary donations. Let's not become numb to the images of this disaster."
For more information on these groups: www.crudem.org and www.gaspov.org
