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Helping in Haiti
Team of UCSD physicians use skills to treat earthquake victims despite inadequate conditions

Ioana Patringenaru | February 8, 2010

Dr. Colleen Buono, second from left, treats a 5-year-old boy found in the rubble of his home.
Related Web site: UCSD Team Haiti
Haiti Relief Resources: Find resources for information and opportunities to provide support through donations of money, services, and goods.

Dr. Colleen Buono had been in Haiti for a week when a 5-year-old boy arrived at the hospital where she and two other UC San Diego physicians had been tending to earthquake victims in a bare-bones emergency room. According to the relative who brought him in, he had been buried in the rubble of his home for almost eight days.

A faint smell, resembling alcohol, emanated from him, showing that without food and water, his body had started attacking muscles and fat to feed itself. Buono and a nurse hooked up the boy, named Monley, to an IV and waited. He had been dehydrated for so long that he couldn’t have food right away. Somehow, he had no broken bones or major injuries.

Monley, whose story has been featured on CNN and other news outlets, is one of the many earthquake victims that Buono and her colleagues from the UCSD Medical Center, Drs. Sean-Xavier Neath and Chris Sloane, treated during their time in Haiti. They had come to the Caribbean nation with the International Relief Teams organization.

Photo of student training

A young patient and his mother at the makeshift hospital in Port-au-Prince. Both the boy's legs were in a cast.

The three physicians said they took back from their mission a sense of accomplishment, tinged with frustration. In Haiti, they were working with basic equipment, without running water and without electricity for a while. They lost patients they would have been able to save here. Still, they were able to care for many and came home with a deep respect for Haiti’s people.

“This was certainly the most profound experience I had,” said Buono, who has deployed to other disasters, including Hurricane Katrina. “It felt like we were making a difference,” she said later. “I think we did.”

The UCSD team sprung into action from their first day on site, Jan. 17. While waiting on the Dominican Republic border with Haiti, they treated refugees at a hospital there. Then after a six-hour bus ride into the Haitian capital, they got to work in Port-au-Prince.

Chaos reigned, Sloane recalls. “There weren’t enough providers trying to take care of too many people,” he said. Neath sprung into action and helped organize a smoothly running emergency room.

At first, the physicians treated less than 100 patients a day, mostly with traumatic injuries. But as word started spreading that treatment was available at the hospital, 300 to 400 people came pouring in on a daily basis. Most had fractures and head injuries. “They had terrible wounds and had been sitting there for two to three weeks without pain medications,” Buono said. She also said she was struck by how enduring her patients were in spite of the terrible conditions.

“People were still helping each other, watching each other, feeding each other, taking care of each other’s children,” she said.

James and Susan Golden (Photo / Victor W. Chen)
Dr. Sean-Xavier Neath, second from right, carries supplies.

Her translator, a young man by the name of Pierre, walked 45 minutes each way from his home to the hospital, where he worked with U.S. doctors. The capital is always plagued with a level of low-grade violence, Neath said. During the doctors’ stint, a young man was shot to death on the streets. Buono said she then began to worry constantly about Pierre’s safety. “I told him: ‘If anyone comes up to you, nothing is worth your life’,” she said. “I was very happy to see him every morning.”

The doctors were bused to the hospital every day because of security concerns. They slept in a conference room at a local hotel, where they had access to water and electricity for a few hours every day. They used the latter to recharge equipment they had brought from home, Neath said.

Each of the physicians had brought 200 pounds of luggage, including supplies donated by the UCSD Medical Center, such as antibiotics and other medications, as well as IV fluids, wound care supplies and basic devices to reduce fractures. “We used everything,” said Neath.

Photo of student training

Dr. Buono treats another young earthquake victim.

Every morning, they would wake up around 5:30 a.m. and grab a Meal Ready to Eat and a water bottle before heading to the hospital. Most of their work took place in tents because many buildings had collapsed. Those still standing were accessible only by stairs and had to be evacuated during each aftershock, making them impractical to treat patients. The ground shook daily, Buono said.

“It was like an elephant walking next to you,” she said.

As the doctors’ two weeks in country wore on, earthquake victims were replaced by ill people who hadn’t been able to get treatment and with gunshot victims injured as a result of looting and gang violence. Meanwhile, conditions improved slightly. Electricity became available. Doctors got access to some oxygen, which they used to treat patients they knew could turn around quickly. Part of the makeshift hospital turned into a maternity ward, which cheered Sloane up.

“It was nice to see new life amongst all the death and suffering,” he said.

He and Buono both recall that one afternoon, many of the patients living in tents on the hospital grounds started singing in unison. “It was touching,” Sloane said. Neath explained that it’s a way of showing solidarity in Haiti. Some days, groups of women would go from bedside to bedside, singing.

James and Susan Golden (Photo / Victor W. Chen)
Two babies in the hospital's makeshift maternity ward.

He had served in the Peace Corps in Haiti more than two decades ago. There was a huge amount of devastation and yet much also remained the same, he learned. “Of the buildings that stood, a lot of them reminded me of how little Port-au-Prince had changed,” he said.

He had little time to dissect his own feelings, though. Everyone was running on adrenaline. The rush was so intense that he didn’t need to have one drop of caffeine during his whole time in country, though he is a heavy coffee drinker, he said.

In addition to working at the Hôpital de l’Université d’Etat d’Haiti (the Haitian state university hospital), the three doctors toured the countryside. Sloane went to the town of Jacmel, one of the country’s historical centers. He met with the country’s public health minister there, who said Haiti desperately needed assistance with supplies, as well as cold storage facilities for vaccines and medications.

Photo of student training

The International Relief Teams group. From left: Rick Goldsberry, a registered nurse, Dr. Nathan Watson of La Jolla and UCSD physicians Drs. Colleen Buono, Chris Sloane and Sean-Xavier Neath.

All three physicians said they experienced a disconnected feeling upon coming back to the United States. For Sloane, the guilt set in as soon as his plane took off. “I flew out, I got away from it,” he said. “These people were stuck with it. They can’t get away.” Landing in Atlanta didn’t help. Everything was so clean. The food was good. But his mind kept going back to the people just a few hundreds of miles away, who had nothing.

Before they left, Buono got to see Monley again. The little boy had been visiting the hospital regularly for checkups. He had developed some complications, including diarrhea and pneumonia, but he was doing well. CNN’s Anderson Cooper had taken interest in the boy and there was talk of sending him to Miami, where he has an aunt.

“But for every story like that, there are thousands of kids who have no one,” Buono said.

 

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