Haiti Update – Supplies

Dear Friends,

Fantastic news, the autoclave that Howie Guan and Patrick Hu drove down to San Francisco arrived to our hospital in Haiti today! I received a message from Joe Kim asking how to set it up when I was on rounds! I had Jerry Daly email him instructions…. they subsequently installed it and it works!!!! They also praised God for the granola bars that classmates David Penner and Oliver packed inside! Praise God! One hundred thousand dollars has been raised for our hospital’s Earthquake fund, but more is needed! Why? Because we are paying the gas for the generator, and likely no patients are paying for treatment right now… and we are running 3 Operating rooms… and patients are still waiting for much needed treatments. I was looking at the audit of books we did while at the hospital and it takes roughly one million dollars to run the hospital for a year. Likely our fund raising for the acute needs, along with all the materials we will be bringing in will bridge the gap until Haitians can start to work again and help pay for their treatment. About two thirds of the money usually came from patients with insurance, which the minority of patients had, however I am sure no one will be making insurance claims any time soon. The supplies we itemized from Marc, Christine and Sarah’s public health assessment that we made a year ago are being brought into our hospital at a record rate! We are currently looking to acquire a good C-Arm for orthopedic cases (it is a machine that has a rotating X-ray for intra-op adjustments) along with 2 quality anesthesia machines. Let me know if you have ascertained these tools for donation, some students are taking on this challenge to find these expensive but essential things. Currently they are trying to open up a 4th OR. Likely one of the OR’s will have to be expanded as soon as we can get a C-Arm into the hospital for some serious ortho procedures. One more thing, the generator was having some issues but they have gotten both functional. There has been talk about moving them out of under the building structure, and possibly bringing in another generator for back up.
There have been continued smaller earthquakes (a 6.1 today and a 6 a few days ago) but the hospital is sound other then some new small cracks.
Also of interest some of the American volunteers were woken up this morning at 4AM by “What a friend we have in Jesus”… despite all the hardship those living still praise God.

Continue to pray for these things:
1. That more money will continue to be raised for the hospital earthquake fund
2. For the safety of the teams over there, especially our classmate Joe Kim, in terms of being overworked, poor sanitary conditions, and ongoing earthquakes
3. That the materials we boxed up today will arrive there safely
4. That we can get a C-Arm and anesthesia machines moved into the hospital
5. That those who are stealing medical supplies, food and water and selling them on the Haitian black market would get caught (I heard from my Haitian friend that this is a big deal right now!)
6. Pray for unity among those working on the ground in Haiti and in the US

For more updates follow posts being made from Haiti at: http://lluinhaiti.blogspot.com/

Sincerely,
David Puder