Haiti patients still in need, grateful for medical care | Columnists | Summerville Journal Scene

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Haiti patients still in need, grateful for medical care

Published Thursday, February 11, 2010 12:17 PM

By Dave Jaskwhich MD
Summerville Journal Scene ®

photo provided

Jaskwhich

(Editor’s note: The following is a first person account by Summerville resident and orthopedic surgeon Dr. Dave Jaskwhich of his mission to a field hospital to help the earthquake survivors in Haiti.)

“We have been quite busy since arriving in country on Wednesday, and the internet access has been unreliable at times. Fortunately the cell phone network is intact. It’s amazing how contacted you can remain with a working cell phone.

We arrived on Wednesday at Les Cayes, and loaded on the back of a Chevy Silverado to make the trip up to Bonne Fin. This team consisted of Lee Cross MD - Orthopedic surgeon from Atlanta, Hannika tenHolster - ER nurse MUSC, Chris Keto-CRNA MUSC, and myself. Les Cayes, which is the only operational airstrip on the southern peninsula is located in the flat plains by the southern coast, while Bonne Fin is at 2000 feet in the mountains overhead. Only small private planes are making it in to Les Cayes, as the single airstrip is rather short. Our flight in was coordinated by a Methodist missionary group located in the Bahamas that was established to provide hurricane relief, but has grown into the only organization with capacity to get supplies into southern Haiti at this time. By the time we flew in, they had coordinated over 150 flights on private aircraft into and out of Les Cayes to Nassau. This is all donated aircraft and the pilots are often-time picking up the tab for fuel ($600) round trip. Our pilot was Drew Hollenbeck from Atlanta, who had flown in eight days before on his own, and flown the Les Cayes-Nassau trip each day. That’s an eight-hour round trip. All of these supplies and personnel would not be here without these planes. Look up Bahamas Habitat if you know anyone who is interested!

We have been hard at work since arrival. Fortunately, the stream of injured patients has slowed over the past several days. In the first week after the earthquake, Dr Robert Belding and Dr Rick Reed had operated on about 10-14 people each day. These were ugly wounds, open fractures, compartment syndromes, and amputations. Remember, many of these people had been trapped under hundreds of pounds of concrete for days, and then had to be dragged, or carried 90 miles to this hospital. They treated about 300 severely injured in the first week. All required multiple operations to fix broken bones, amputate legs or arms, and debride wounds. Our census is down to 65 now. We had only three deaths in these patients, but probably over half would have died of infection without the treatment they received at Bonne Fin. The stories are amazing to hear. One lady had her arm trapped for days and ended up cutting her arm off at the humerus with a rock to free herself. Today she smiles! Many patients lost all or some of their families. One man had both femurs broken, and was transported over four days by truck, bike, and pack to arrive here for treatment. Today we saw him on rounds, and he was all smiles, but still will remain were for several weeks before leaving the hospital. He, like many of these patients, just have no where to return to.

Tomorrow Dr Cross and I have 12 cases, trying to finish up some issues with several patients so that they will remain stable until the next team arrives on Wednesday. The cases consist of three femur fractures that have been in traction, one tibia fracture that arrived yesterday from Port au Prince, and eight return debridements. I am afraid that many of these wounds will still end in below knee amputations, but at least the femur fractures can be fixed. These people live in a very physical environment, so it becomes very hard to make a living with an amputation, but often times we don't have much of a choice.

Lastly, this effort is being sustained totally and entirely by donations from private sources. We have relied heavily on the Bahamas Habitat effort for transport. All of our medical supplies, equipment, medications, etc. are donated by outside sources. The hospital staff, which until Wednesday had been unpaid since April 2009, is being supported by donations from a group of Apostolic Churches in the Midwest. Fortunately, these nurses and medical support staff have been paid for the month of Jan/ Feb 2010, as they have been working 12-14 hour days, seven days a week for four weeks now. Unfortunately, Rudolph Reiche MD, the local Haitian doctor who is assisting us daily, remains unpaid for his efforts. He is supporting his wife and two-year-old son. He has told me that he will remain here for the next several months until the earthquake victims are treated, but then will have to move on elsewhere in Haiti for another staff position. The American doctors who have had the pleasure of working with him leave him some cash when we rotate home, but I am sure that he is just getting by.

We are supposed to leave out of Les Cayes on Tuesday morning for Nassau, then to Charleston. We are swapping planes in Nassau with the third team from MUSC consisting of Dr Keith Merrill, and two ortho residents. They will be joining a team already in place that consists of two CRNA, four nurses, and a wound care specialist, all out of the midwest. A fourth team will leave from Charleston on the following week. A fifth one is planned after that. So it looks like we will have some medical coverage for at least three to four weeks.

Dave Jaskwhich is an orthopedic surgeon at Lowcountry Orthopedics and Sports Medicine in Summerville. He volunteered his services for a week-long trip to Haiti after a 7.0 earthquake leveled the capital in January.

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