After Amputations, Victims With No Place to Go Fill Haiti’s Hospitals

[undeterred]

Source: The New York Times

By RAY RIVERA
Published: January 24, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — In a tent serving as an acute-care ward on the grounds of this city’s biggest hospital, Jocelin François was sitting up in bed when a nurse went by, barking at him in French. Mr. François, whose left leg was amputated nearly to his knee after the earthquake on Jan. 12, threw out his arms and fell back on the mattress.

“She said I have to go home,” Mr. François, 26, said. “I don’t want to leave until I can walk. I am weak. I have no place to go.”

A doctor, sensing some confusion, intervened. “We’re not telling him he has to go home,” the doctor, Rose Antoine, 33, a native of Haiti who now lives in Pennsylvania, explained to a reporter. “We’re only telling him that this is an acute ward and we need the bed. We’re trying to find a step-down unit where he can go to.”

Nearly two weeks after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince, the immediate health crisis, which involved treating the injuries of people who were crushed by collapsing buildings and amputating damaged limbs, has begun to settle into a new phase. This one is perhaps even more daunting: caring for thousands of post-operation trauma patients who are ready to leave the hospitals, but lack homes or families to go home to. Many will require prosthetic limbs, frequent wound cleanings, bandage changes and months of rehabilitation.




Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/world/americas/25amputee.html

---

So now thousands of Haitians are in the same situation as uninsured American patients. (Except that they're also homeless.) Stabilized. But who provides and pays for follow up care and prosthetics?

[babylonsister]

1. Weren't they in the same situation as uninsured Americans before

the earthquake? As sad as it is, these patients are probably lucky they got their limbs amputated. Those that didn't have infections running through their bodies, or are dead.

The next step in this crisis is to find homes for Haitians who lost theirs. It's a daunting undertaking.



Hundreds of thousands of Haitians await shelter in makeshift camps

By William Booth and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, January 25, 2010


CROIX DES BOUQUETS, HAITI -- Aid organizations struggling to shelter more than 600,000 Haitians made homeless by the earthquake said Sunday that there are only 10,000 tents in the country, and that they remain in a warehouse, relegating the population to many more nights in squalid camps and on street sidewalks.

"We have a severe shortage of tents," said Niurka Pineiro of the International Organization for Migration, the lead agency tasked with creating immediate solutions for Haitians left without a roof over their heads.

The IOM is preparing its first official tent city for 10,000 people here in the dry, flat cactus scrub west of the town of Croix des Bouquets, about 10 miles from the Port-au-Prince airport. The site is baking hot, barren, dusty and located next to a half-constructed development gone bust called Village des Antilles. The "village" was abandoned five or six years ago, according to Jean Francois Pitesse, a guard, who said, "They ran out of money." What is left is a concrete block ghost town painted in South Florida pastels, now roofless, rotting.

Relief officials say they cannot erect the tents here until they build latrines and arrange for water. According to Stevenson Brea, a man from Croix des Bouquets who showed up because he heard there might be work, the foreigners came with bulldozers, leveled the field, and then left -- three days ago. Nobody was working at the site Sunday.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/24/AR2010012402891.html

[undeterred]

2. They were probably much worse off than Americans

before the earthquake in terms of health care. A few hospitals but lower quality health care. There have been a lot of foreign medical groups in Haiti helping out for a long time.

A lot of people who were saved from the rubble and lost a limb could still die from post-op infections.

At least the climate is not harsh, and the world has turned its eyes in their direction. I hope that leads to a better infrastructure.

[EFerrari]

5. Except the world they're going back out into

looks like it's been nuked and their government has disappeared.

So, it's not exactly the same as uninsured Americans, no.

[AlienGirl]

3. We need non-stigmatized, voluntary euthanasia for all who want it, worldwide.

Okay, hard truth time. If you were an impoverished Haitian without marketable skills other than physical labor, would you rather survive an amputation and lose your sole source of income, putting the stress of caring for you on your family--those who are still alive, anyway--knowing that neither you nor they can afford to pay for prosthetics and painkillers and other follow-up care; or would you rather choose a painless and certain death and spare yourself and your family the pain and difficulty? I know I would choose to be put down.

There are lives that reach a point of hopelessness, where the person has to be allowed to make the decision to cut their losses and go. It is not that these lives are without value--but whatever value they have is not enough to impel the world to spend resources to keep them alive or healthy. Please, let those of us who are in that position go peacefully and painlessly.

Tucker

[undeterred]

4. People who run out of money should have the option of being "put down"?

I'm amazed that anyone would consider voluntary suicide a solution to economic problems.

If there is not enough value to impel the world to spend resources on suffering people, its 'the world' that needs to change, not the suffering people who need to be destroyed.

[AlienGirl]

7. The world won't change. When, or if, you'd choose suicide is up to you

Me, facing years of painful deterioration of bones and teeth, without remedy, facing disfigurement...my decision might not be the same as yours, but I do not want to be kept alive without my consent, and I want the option to go when I have to.

Tucker

[undeterred]

9. ...

:hug: I support your right to choose for yourself, but I hope you find the resources you need so it doesn't come to that choice.

[jwirr]

13. Many of us face those conditions with courage and I do not think

the Haitians are any different. As to voluntary suicide? Is it ever anything else? And as a former social worker I can tell you that if someone truly wants to commit suicide they will and they do not need our permission.

On the other hand our job in a crisis is to offer all the aid that is needed not kill people off.

[AlienGirl]

23. My grandfather, unable to sit or turn over in bed by himself, watched by nurses 24/7

He spent four years like that. Four years of this former logger, avid woodsman, the man who built houses with his own arthritic hands, eventually too frail to lift a spoon to his mouth. He asked, repeatedly, for release. If he could, he said, he'd walk into the woods...but he couldn't sit, much less walk. He couldn't do it for himself, and so his world shrank to a broken body in a narrow bed without even a breeze from the pine forests he loved.

And what of the people who want to make sure they don't mess it up and end up shooting off their face or being hypoxic just long enough to incur permanent brain damage?

As a former social worker, I can tell you that not everyone wants to be forced to face situations "with courage" and many do not believe that enduring pain adds anything to their stature.

Tucker

[jwirr]

25. Isn't that what we have living wills for? You can even stop food and

water.

[jberryhill]

14. I understand you, but it does not need to be institutionalized

I've got no quarrel with someone who wants to engage in what they consider to be "rational suicide", but that is not something that requires or should receive social support outside of the normal end-of-life context.

[AlienGirl]

24. It needs to be allowed and the assistants not prosecuted.

[David in Canada]

27. Agreed

I agree that people should have the option to be euthanized if they so wish, albeit with safeguards to protect those who wish to live.

To force someone to suffer in torment is sadistic, NOT something to romanticize.

[Tx4obama]

6. It that a quote from a Hitler movie?

The second part of your second sentence in your second paragraph sounds as if you took that right out of a Hilter film.
Be careful there.

[AlienGirl]

8. Hitler also had involuntary abortions done on women, but we don't outlaw abortions because of it

[Tx4obama]

10. You have ignored what I said to you...

How do you justify this part of what you said:
"..... -but whatever value they have is not enough to impel the world to spend resources to keep them alive or healthy. "

That is almost exactly the same wording of what a German Nazi woman said in: "Life is Beautiful"
---------------

And as far as your new comment, we do not allow involuntary abortions in the USA so your argument is pointless.

[varelse]

12. If I had not read your "life story" thread

I'd be taking you apart right now. Instead, you're scaring me. Are you ok?

[babylonsister]

16. Thanks. I remember the story, too. This is over the top. nt

[boppers]

15. Voluntary death is available in most locations (if you know how, and have the will).

Some locations, of course, make it harder than others, some make it easier.

The stigma issue, however, is entirely different. That's a problem of changing people's religious/ethical belief systems.

[babylonsister]

17. Tucker, an amputation isn't a death sentence. For many, it's life.

I don't understand your harshness. And I know nothing about the Haitians who lost their limbs, but what about kids? That's happened also. So they should just give it up because all help is lost?

I don't agree.

[buzzard]

19. I unfortunately agree with you, I have been thinking about this for a long time, it will be nearly

impossible to survive for many Haitians without limbs. I don't have faith in God or government to solve this untenable position so if it was me I would choose death. It may be the "easy way out for some" but I see no need to suffer for years with little hope of "life".

[flamingdem]

26. This is a joke or you are a sad human being nt

[jwirr]

11. Didn't someone mention decommissioned ships that are just sitting around?

The could be turned into "nursing homes" for those patients and staffed by Haitians who are also homeless. A floating nation?

[XemaSab]

18. I passed some today

They would need a LOT of work to be suitable, but any roof is better than no roof at all.

[LeftyMom]

20. The Mothball Fleet?

I imagine the cost and time to renovate and transport one of those ships would exceed building a hospital from scratch.

[XemaSab]

21. That would be my guess too

Or it might also be effective to float the things down there and just use them for scrap to build something else. :P

[LeftyMom]

22. Well, I'm sure Haiti doesn't have a lot of rules about lead paint and asbestos.

http://cbs13.com/local/mothball.fleet.suisun.2.722416.html