Paul's Haiti Photos

Here are some photos that will give you a better idea about my time in Haiti. We left Ecuador Thursday morning January 14 arriving in Florida that afternoon when we met with a Samaritan's Purse team. Here we are waiting to leave that evening.


Our team from HCJB consisted of (from left to right):  me (the anesthesiologist from Shell), Sheila Leach (nurse and head of HCJB's disaster response team from Quito), Leonardo Febres (orthopedic surgeon from Quito) and...


(still left to right): Eckehart Wolff (orthopedic and general surgeon from Shell), Steve Nelson (family physican from Quito), Mark Nelson (family physician from Quito), and Martin Harrison (water engineer and head of HCJB's community development office in Quito.)


The following morning, Friday, January 15 we were cleared to leave and then arrived in Haiti at about 10am. Here are all in our seats ready for "blast off".

We unloaded the plane in just 9 minutes so its spot could be used for another plane bringing relief teams.



Early that afternoon we arrived at Baptist Haiti Mission, our home base for the stay in Haiti.  Pictured is their church and to the right the edge of the hosptial can be seen.


We met first with the hospital staff and had a brief tour of the facilities.  Dr. Bernard is pictured in the middle holding a piece of paper.  He, along with Claud, a senior level medical student (not pictured) had individually admitted and cared for all of the wounded until we arrived.  At this point, we were told, many of the hospital's physicians were unaccounted for.

We then set about triaging and cataloging the approximately 300 patients at this 100 bed facility.  The wards, hallways and meeting rooms were packed with patients on hospital beds and matresses on the floor.

The women's ward.

Most patients, we found, had injuries to their arms and legs.  Significant about any disaster is that all injuries occur at the same moment.  So, they all had been waiting for at least 3 days, many of whom had open and now grossly infected fractures and wounds.  Pictured is a patient with a "cast" to immobalize a fractured limb made of cardboard and string.  We saw many of these which are remarkably effective.


Here is one of the two operating rooms at Baptist Haiti Mission.  I mostly used this one.  Notice the two monitors sitting side-by-side on the top of the anesthesia machine.  These are the two which were donated to the hospital director and miraculously discovered when the previous one gave out.



We set to work in the OR later that Friday night when we began our first operation.  Here I am hard at work anesthetizing one of the many patients with fractures.


A common scene early in our time there before the flood of  supplies flowed.  Eckehart Wolff (left) and Leo Febres (right) worked with sterile gloves only stabalizing open fractures with the "pin and plaster" technique.

Sheila Leech (left) served as the operating room circulating nurse.  Dr. Leo Febres is examining a wound while I'm starting an IV and being watched by the translation team of Haitian medical students.

  

One of my little patients who has a fractured femur has just received an injection of anesthesia medicine and we are waiting for it to take effect and then wheel her into the OR.  On the left is Stefano, the grandson of Madam Kafa, a medical student who helped us translate.

Pre- and postoperative wound care was a massive, endless job that the family physicians from our team with the aid of many other volunteers attended to daily.

Benjamin, pictured with his fiancée, is on staff at Baptist Haiti Mission and served as an excellent translator.

Madam Kafa is an 83 year old grandmother who has been working at Baptist Haiti Mission.  She tirelessly wrapped and steralized surgical packs for us as she has done for the hospital for decades!



Nicole usually works for several NGOs that serve Haiti but served diligently as our operating room coordinator and translator.  She kept the flow of patients in and out of the OR going.



Chaplain Jack of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn. spent countless hours with patients and their families while in the hospital.  Pictured here is the shepherd boy who was injured by falling rocks during the earthquake.  He trusted Christ as Savior while in the hospital and is receiving a children's Bible from Jack.



This is Vanessa whom I mentioned in our update.  When she came to the operating room the first time for care on her left arm, we were told that the lemon around her neck was a symbol of voodoo.  However, upon a subsequent visit someone else mentioned that it was nothing more than a remedy to dry up a mother's milk.  Along these lines we questioned her and found out that her 11 month old nursing child had perished in the earthquake.  This is why she wore the lemon.  Wow!  Heartbreaking!  In later days, through the chaplains' ministry, she trusted Christ as her Savior.  Gracias a Dios!

One of the hospital chaplains leads the patients in a song of worship.  This room shares a wall with the OR area and we could hear them singing as we worked in surgery.

 Knowing that many of our disaster relief colleagues were living in a much more spartan manner, our team was grateful for our accommodations in a guest house on the mission grounds.

Martin Harrison served as the water engineer for our team and is posing in front of the portable water treatment plant which he installed on the mission compound.  Fish pond water was amazingly transformed into drinking water by the gallons per hour!

And here it is!  The green pond that Martin used as his water source to make the clean drinking water.  His comment on this was, "The fish will just have to share a bit and learn to swim a little closer to each other."

Upon our return to the airport, its grounds were now covered by tent villages of aid workers of many nationalities.  The one in the foreground is Turkey.

The airport terminal was considered unsafe to use so ticket counters and check-in stations were relocated outside.

Evidence of severe structual damage to the airport terminal.

Our ride home courtesy of the generous donations through Samaritan's Purse.