In almost immediate response to the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, six ISHI members traveled with a team organized jointly by Dr. Saidel Laine, an anesthesiologist working at Mercy Hospital in Coconut Grove, Florida, and Marie Michelle Sidney, an intensive care/telemetry nurse from Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center, Florida, for an eight-day emergency surgical mission. The team was composed of twenty-one members from various hospitals around the country, including Dr. Ziad Sifri, trauma surgeon and ISHI President and Co-Founder; Dr. Kevin Clarke, general surgeon and ISHI volunteer; Dr. Diego Reino, MD surgical resident and ISHI volunteer; Dr. Daniel Elroy, MD anesthesiologist and ISHI volunteer; Susan Walsh, CRNA and ISHI volunteer; and Mae Tingson, RN, OR nurse, and ISHI volunteer.
Once the mission team had been organized and confirmed, Dr. Laine contacted Dr. Claude Surena, President of the Haitian Medical Association and National Coordinator. After much discussion, the mission was set to go to Eliazar Germain Hospital, a 45-bed facility located at Rue-Panamericaine, Petion-Ville, Haiti, not far from the epicenter of the earthquake in Port-au-Prince. The facility sustained minimal damage in the quake and is still functioning.
The ISHI members of the team left for Haiti from New Jersey on Thursday January 21 to arrive in West Palm Beach, Florida. They drove the next morning to Fort Pierce/Port Saint Lucie International Airport and boarded a Missionary International Flight. At the airport transport, was facilitated by Mayor Thomas Masters of Riviera Beach, Palm Beach County, along with Commissioner Dwayne, who accompanied the team to Haiti.
The team left Fort Pierce and arrived in Haiti after a stop in Bahamas to refuel. At the Airport in Haiti, Dr. Surena sent a group to greet the team, who were transported in two SUVs and three pickup trucks to move their supplies. From the airport they were taken directly to Eliazar Germain Hospital, where the Medical Director Dr. Yvette Fantal and the Director of Ophtalmology, Dr. Carole Day Cadet, were waiting. They were given a complete tour of the facility, which allowed them to plan the appropriate adjustments, such as transforming a one-room suite into a three-room OR suite, and modifying the OB room to expand the recovery room from four to eight beds. The major issue that the team identified was that the hospital was empty, not a single patient was on site, mainly because the injured who were brought in after the earthquake could not receive adequate care. Dr. Day accompanied three of the team members to the only functioning radio station, signal FM, to announce the arrival the team and their availability to help and serve all patients. The response was excellent! On Saturday morning, as the team was getting settled, patients started flowing in and they ended up doing eight surgeries that day along.
On Sunday, the team received a larger number of patients and performed nine interventions. The following days they received more and more patients, and the number of performed surgeries in a day rose to sixteen.
The hospital we received over five hundred patients for the week. Some members of the team, led by Dr. Ziad Sifri, went each day to the National Soccer Field Stadium Sylvio Cator, where over one thousand injured men, women, and children had set up a temporary camp. Forty to sixty patients were seen each time, and ten to fifteen were sent by triage to the hospital by ambulance.
On four occasions, the team was aided by French team who brought patients from the hospital at Diquini by helicopter or by ground transportation. They also received and admitted patients from the Russian Field Hospital Group for treatment and surgery.
A total of eighty-two surgeries were performed during the course of the week, and more than one thousand patients were seen by our team.
The procedures performed were mainly to correct previously done procedures in the hours and days immediately following the disaster. The infection rate from these procedures was remarkably high. There were countless incisions, drainages, debridments, stump revisions, and, above all, the administering of antibiotics.
They did not, however, perform a single limb amputation.
At the close of the mission, the team left behind all the remaining OR supplies, drugs for anesthesia, antibiotics, instruments, two orthopedic trays, and two monitors.
On the final day of the mission, they had booked and performed sixteen surgeries, aided by a Pilipino group of twenty-one physicians and nurses to insure the continuation of care. They attended rounds and received reports for each individual patient. Perhaps most importantly, the team briefed the Haitian medical staff at the hospital to help ensure that the patients would continue to get the same quality of care after the team’s departure.
With thousand of patients still waiting for care, and incalculable numbers needing continuing care for amputations and other serious injuries, we strongly believe that our involvement is not over yet. There will be a need for interventions and re-interventions, prosthetics, and rehabilitation in the coming weeks and months.
ISHI and Dr. Laine’s team are already working with the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) to assist in trying to make Eliazar Germain Hospital a center of excellence for the Haitian people. ISHI is in the process of organizing a second, follow-up mission to continue the work that they started.
Excerpted from a report written by Dr. Saidel Laine.