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We’re making progress

Posted on March 8th, 2010 Andrew Haglund No comments

Welcome to the Hopital

Greetings on a beautiful bright and sunny morning here in Haiti. After a quiet weekend of overcast skies, fog, and rain, Monday morning has brought us a cloudless sky and beautiful sunshine. While we continue to face many challenges around the hospital, significant progress is being made and I would like to highlight a few of those areas with some pics.

Patients waiting in the main hallway on a not so mad Monday

Depot Central d'Haiti

Pharmacy stock room

Tent distribution for discharged patients

Thank you all for your prayers and support.
The C-Arm arrives

Posted on March 2nd, 2010 Andrew Haglund No comments
Post Authored by Dr. Nelson

It was an emotional moment when our OEC 9600 C-arm arrived today at the Hopital Adventist d'Haiti. It was on the night of Jan 14 just after my arrival in Port au Prince, less than 48 h after the earthquake that I sent Dr. Jim Matiko a brief message that he should start looking for a C-arm and get it down here as quickly as possible. For those of you who do not know - this is a machine that can give us instantaneous radiographic images. Since their inception in the 1970's they have revolutionized orthopaedic surgery. Seeing the magnitude of the orthopaedic problems, and knowing the time involved in making a transaction of this nature I knew it would be important to initiate the process ASAP. Now less than 7 weeks after the 7.0 we will be able to greatly expand our surgical spectrum. We have a 75 year old man named Albert who was admitted 2 days ago with an intertrochanteric hip fracture who will be the first beneficiary of this new technology tomorrow morning. Even before the arrival of this machine we have been able to do procedures available at few other hospitals in Port au Prince. Because of our long history, our current operations and stability as well as our long term vision we are increasingly becoming a center for advanced orthopaedic procedures. Thanks to the Arrowhead Orthopaedic Group and other donors we have now taken a major step towards fulfilling our vision as a center of excellence.

It was quite a task unloading this monolith. The first image taken was a thumbs up of my right hand. The Haitians were amazed by the technology and one said "where ever the Americans are people will live". We also have a beautiful printer to print the images which the patients keep with their medical record for follow up care.
A Sabbath Days Rest

Posted on March 1st, 2010 Andrew Haglund No comments
Scott and I decided to take our first Sabbath off here in Haiti. It seemed that after 6 weeks largely stuck int the hospital, a road trip was in order, so we headed to Jacmel on the southern coast of the island. Jacmel is a quaint little village by the sea with lots of French influence. While there is some earthquake damage in Jacmel it is not nearly as widespread as it is here around Port-au-Prince. The journey there took us up and over some very deforested yet picturesque mountains and through a number of little towns. Below are some of the sights from our trip.

An Adventist Church by the road in Leogane

Leaving the Port-au-Prince basin

Landslide that completely covered the main road

The French influence

The U.S. influence

Jacmel wharf with relief teams in place

Total Destruction

fires burn everywhere in Haiti

We stopped at the Hotel Cyvadier Plage for lunch

The Chief

The I.C.

East of Jacmel, looking towards the D.R.
Everybody’s leaving but we’re still here

Posted on February 24th, 2010 Andrew Haglund No comments
Hello blog-o-sphere, sorry it's been so long since I've made a post. Seems every time we think things are getting better we are dealt a new deck of cards. We have been as busy as ever here but with new and varying challenges. While post-op ortho cases are gradually being discharged and leaving the property we have been plagued with significant traffic in our ER. To make matters worse it seems that more and more NGOs and government groups alike are ending their Haiti relief missions already. What this means is that our ability to transfer patients out to places that may have resources we don't is dwindling and will soon be gone. Our two best transfer options for critical patients have been the USS Comfort and the University of Miami Field Hospital. Word on the street and confirmed by our own challenges in transferring patients to either, is that both will be ending their missions here in Haiti shortly. By default, we have become the regional trauma center for the entire west side of Port au Prince and most of the communities on the western peninsula. This was never our intent and we are ill equipped for such responsibility but, we will carry on and are committed to the Haitian communities we serve.

Sorry to be cynical but apparently the collective goal of many response agencies working here was to: return Haiti's health care system to the pre-quake state and then go home. Well folks we (LLU and the volunteer groups that have and continue to work here) exceeded that goal just by showing up. The idea that that goal is an acceptable level makes me want to scream. This nation has lost upwards of 225,000 people, almost 1 million of the surviving population are without proper food, water, shelter, or sanitation and somewhere between 7,000 - 10,000 have had limbs amputated, not to mention the huge number of patients with surgically treated injuries. To think that the international community can come here for 6 weeks and then turn their backs is simply unacceptable. LLU is not leaving our work here in Haiti and we continue to need your support. Please if you have the means to help our work, click on the red button at the top of this blog and support our cause.

Aftershocks
We have had two 4.7 aftershocks this week both in the middle of the night. Significant aftershocks continue to be a very real reality here and are detrimental to the already fragile psyche of the Haitian population and our volunteer medical staff. During an aftershock our patients in the hospital all go running and screaming out of the building, many dragging their IVs on the ground or ripping them out all together. This is a major obstacle for us to overcome.

Shelving update
I am pleased to report that we have more than 20 shelving units built and in use in the various operational units around the hospital. We have more shelves being built and more on the way. This one simple thing has radically improved the efficiency of our operation.

BCFS Texas Strike Team
We have been blessed for almost two weeks now to have a group of volunteers from San Antonio Texas here at the hospital with us. This team is a highly trained incident management team (IMT) that have worked in multiple disaster zones such as Hurricanes Katrina, Ike, 9/11 and others. They have helped us implement an Incident Command System (ICS) structure that has dramatically increased the efficiency of our relief effort. We have implemented specific roles that each of us play in order to decrease overlap of duty and maximize productivity. ICS stresses the creation and dissemination of very specific objectives to be completed in each 24 hour period. These objectives are shared twice a day at 7:30AM and 7:30PM in a very structured staff briefing. Overall this system seems to be steering us rapidly towards our goal of resuming normal hospital operations inside the building. Much work remains but ICS has been very helpful in moving us forward.

The Chief and The Commander in their ICS vests

Numbers
70 post-op patients still outside in the tents
15 patients inside the various wards in the main building
21 sick babies
10 pregnant moms waiting to deliver
16 volunteer staff with GI issues in the last week
18 hour work days still the norm for Andrew

Keep Haiti in your prayers and thoughts as much work remains here.
Out of the Rubble – Blog

Posted on February 22nd, 2010 Michael No comments
Andrew wanted us to let you know about a blog that myself, Michael Wolcott, and Cosmin Cosma have. The blog is called Out of the Rubble and it's a behind the scenes look at the documentary that we're filming based here at Hopital Adventiste d'Haiti. We try and get pictures and small videos up as much as possible.
Last Night

Posted on February 21st, 2010 Michael No comments
We hung out in the ER for a few hours last night, but like usual when we’re there it’s slow. But, in peds an approximately 27-week-old baby came in. She was born in the camp outside the hospital, she still had some dirt on her. Every effort was made to transfer her to a medical facility that could provide life support but none could be found. The nurse on duty called a doctor in the US to get some advice, the doctor gave her a 50 percent chance of surviving the night. At 1:30am the baby was doing good but the mother was running a fever.

We made it until about 2am and then crashed, we'd been up for over 20 hours (not counting a short nap).

Today the plan is to get some interviews, talk with a patient outside who lost his leg and has a wife and two small children, and spend some more time with Sebastien.
Night Shift

Posted on February 21st, 2010 Michael No comments
The internet has been down for a little while, this post is from early yesterday evening.

Tonight we’re going to hang out in the ER, the night shift. We’ll see how long we last (it was an early morning). We’re going to try and go on a transport or two. Seems like the transports usually go to the Miami Field Hospital or the USS Comfort. When they leave transports will probably come to this hospital. We’ll bring along Cosmin’s LED Cool Light and it could be a good low light test for the 7d.

This morning we rode along on an airport trip. One of the orthopedic surgeons was heading home. We drove through downtown, saw the palace and the devastation around Port-au-Prince.
Organizations Impressed

Posted on February 19th, 2010 Michael No comments
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have visited the campus in the last few days. All indications are that when some of the temporary medical facilities leave Haiti, Hopital Adventiste d’Haiti will be the most advanced hospital in the country. Among the many reasons for this is the water filtration system. Once the system is up and running this might be the only hospital in the country to have potable water running through it’s pipes. Another big reason is the condition of the campus, the hospital building is in great shape. Perhaps the most important reason is the relationship between Adventist Health International, Loma Linda University, and Haiti. AHI and LLU have had a presence here in Haiti and they will continue be here in the future. When some of the more advanced medical facilities leave Haiti, this hospital will most likely be the place where critical patients are sent. The Haitian people working along side the volunteers have made tremendous strides since the earthquake making this hospital one that the people of Haiti can turn to in the midst of this crisis.
A million words…

Posted on February 17th, 2010 Andrew Haglund No comments
So if a picture is worth a 1000 words what's a video worth? The video at the link below was shot during my brief visit home and gives you some further insight into our efforts here.

http://www.llu.edu/public-health/haiti.page

Thanks to Cosmin and Michael for the post yesterday. I may need to rely on them even more as it seems things are as busy as ever for me. Besides they take better pictures and do this kind of thing for a living.

Thanks to you all for your continued prayers and support.
New Autoclave

Posted on February 16th, 2010 Michael No comments

A quick introduction: I’m Michael Wolcott, myself and Cosmin Cosma from the office of University Relations at LLU are in Haiti for a couple of weeks. From time to time we’ll try and help Andrew out a little by updating this blog.

A new autoclave came to the hospital today. The US Navy and US Army brought it and unloaded it. It was quite a feat and great to see my tax dollars at work. The autoclave will allow the hospital to safely sterilize more equipment.

There’s also word about the shelving that will allow all of the supplies to be organized. It sounds like it might be arriving tomorrow.

We’ve been here for two days and are amazed by the work of the volunteers, a stream of people pour into the hospital and they’re able to see patient after patient day and night.
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