Docs blog from Haiti
More dispatches from Haiti -- from the doctors themselves. Of the medical teams we've told you about who are on the ground in Haiti, several have been chronicling their missions with blogs of their own.
Dr. Jean-Max Hogarth from St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson returned to his native Haiti. He shares this tale of a 9-year-old girl, found under the rubble after 3 days with both feet partially amputated. She had only her mother left, after her father and two siblings were killed by the disaster.
She is a beautiful loving child that has grabbed the hearts of everyone in the hospital. God Bless her. I will NEVER forget her. Never
Unfortunately, she is one of MANY. The emergency workers have ended their search and rescue missions.
What remains is a nation in great need of long term help. God Bless my beloved Haiti.
No pictures. Too graphic
Here's a dispatch from the folks at Jhpiego, with a tale from a nurse who say women in labor aren't getting the care they deserve in Haiti, because doctors are overwhelmed with trauma injuries. Among the challenges the Hopkins-affiliated global health doctors are encountering: not enough obstetricians, doctors performing c-sections in tents with dirt underfoot and Haiti's main school for nurses and midwifes leveled by the earthquake.
In addition to those already there, more medical teams are on the way.
Ten members of Johns Hopkins special disaster unit, known as its Go Team, deployed for Haiti this morning. It's the fist of two teams from the unit responding to the disaster. The second team leaves Feb. 4 and may staff the 150-bed U.S. Navy Expeditionary Medical Treatment Facility being set up at the Port-au-Prince port. They'll accept patients transferred from the USNS Comfort.
The help is desperately needed. If you haven't yet, take a look at our colleague Robert Little's latest dispatch from the Comfort, a wrenching story about the tough decisions doctors must make when triaging patients.
Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston aboard the USNS Comfort: an airman talks to a young patient.
Comments
Dr. Beth Sloand, a member of the recently deployed Go Team and an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, will be blogging from Haiti.
Over the past 10 years, Dr. Sloand has regularly taken undergraduate and graduate nursing students to Haiti to participate in a variety of activities, including conducting community assessments, working with public health agencies, and providing primary care.
Posted by: Dave | January 29, 2010 7:47 AM