Volunteers Expand Service to Other Hospitals

Today was one of the toughest days I've seen here in Haiti. Two Project HOPE volunteers, Jason Harris and Richelle Charles, have shifted their focus to the hospital in Petite Riviere, a small city on the opposite side of the Artibonite River. It's not far from the Hospital Albert Schweitzer, but because there's not a direct road between the two, and because the north side of the river is seeing more cholera cases, that hospital has remained extremely busy with new cholera cases. Jason and Richelle jumped in head first, assisting local nurses in evaluating patients and tending to urgent cases.

By the end of the day, both were exhausted but practically begging to stay longer. Unfortunately, with the state of the roads in this part of Haiti, it was necessary to leave before dark. Having learned a great deal about the processes in the Petite Riviere hospital on their first day, they are both looking forward to returning today to see if they can't make some improvements in patient flow to help heal people more quickly and get them home.

In the end, cholera is not a difficult sickness to treat if addressed in its early stages. Unfortunately, the early stages do not last very long, and when an outbreak strikes the number of patients can quickly overwhelm medical staff. In the end, it's as much about putting in place efficient systems for patient care as much as it's about in-depth medical knowledge.

The other interesting part of my day was the part I spent with Eddie Rawson, son of Ian Rawson, Hospital Albert Schweitzer's managing director and overall guru. We traveled around the Artibonite valley to see some of the everyday activities through which people can be exposed to cholera. We found men diving in the river to pull out buckets of sand to mix up concrete, women doing their wash in the river, and men working rice paddies irrigated with river water. All expressed the general feeling that they had no choice; their contact with potentially contaminated water sources was a calculated risk, and while catching cholera was something they desperately hoped to avoid, they could not afford to simply stop working. Such are the realities of Haiti.

Photos and story by HOPE's correspondent on the ground, Brendan Hoffman.

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With many of the newly-arrived volunteers exhausted after a long week and the regular outpatient services at the hospital closed for the weekend, many of the volunteers took the morning off. Not so with Jason Harris, a pediatric infectious disease specialist who arrived on Thursday evening for his volunteer stint with Project HOPE. Jason and I started off first thing in the morning making the rounds in the pediatric ward, checking on a couple of cases of particular concern before moving on to the young cholera patients, where Jason eventually communicated through the language barrier his desire to collect stool samples from the most recently arrived patients.

The good news is that there was only one new admission this morning, but it's still important to collect these samples and have them properly analyzed to determine which antibiotics are the most effective against this particular cholera strain. That analysis will take place back at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, so after collecting a few specimens, we made a visit to the lab where Jason and Richelle Charles, another Project HOPE volunteer and infectious disease specialist who arrived with Jason on Thursday, cultured some samples and stored them as best they could before they can get them shipped home. This process continued throughout the afternoon, collecting and culturing samples to be analyzed back in the States.

Meanwhile, most of the volunteer nurses are taking the 3pm to 11pm shift today. It's nice to see the camaraderie developing between the regular Haitian staff at the hospital and the HOPE volunteers, despite the fact that almost none of them have a language in common. There's a mutual respect that develops when everybody realizes they're there for the same reason: saving lives.

Photos and story by HOPE's correspondent on the ground, Brendan Hoffman.

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Volunteers Continue to Help with Cholera Outbreak in Haiti

The volunteer nurses who have traveled to Haiti with Project HOPE are settling into their new routines nicely here at the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer. Five arrived Tuesday evening: Emily Ferguson, Joyce Barkin, Alysia Monaco, Nora Sheehan, and Jane Caporiccio. Jane's sister, Jill Caporiccio, is already here and lending her nursing skills where needed on top of helping to coordinate Project HOPE's activities in Deschapelles.

As the number of cholera cases coming into the hospital has stabilized and routines established to handle them, some of the nurses are applying their skills elsewhere. Jane and Emily have been lending a helping hand in the busy emergency department, treating everything from infections to motorbike accidents, while Joyce tapped her experience as a scrub nurse to assist surgeons in the operating room today. It's amazing to see how hard these women work, the care with which they do it, and the way they constantly keep busy as if they themselves needed to keep moving in order to stay alive. They've divided themselves into two shifts, staffing the hospital from 7am until 11pm, and with another week and a half left in their mission, it seems as if they're just getting warmed up.

Photos and story by HOPE's correspondent on the ground, Brendan Hoffman.

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