Haiti 2012: June 4

If last year's trip to Sisters of Charity children's hospital allowed me to see the gravity of need in Haiti for medicine, today gave me a broader and more realistic picture of that need. A few of us woke up at 4:00 A.M. to take a five year-old boy to the hospital around Port-au-Prince to get an x-ray of his newly-healed arm. We left at 5:00 and arrived by 7:00, the time the hospital opens its doors. Some patients arrive earlier than 7:00, and by the time we arrived, the small waiting room was already packed.The orderlies, mostly American missionaries, place a piece of tape with a number on the hands of those nearest to them on the waiting area benches. We saw the number "29" on the hand of one woman. The doctor, one of the few orthopedic surgeons in the region, arrives at 8:00 and serves those in order of appearance. He saw us on his way in and made a point to see us earlier than some who were already there. We didn't even receive a number. At first, I thought it was because we were Americans, but thought it could also be because he knew the long-term missionary who brought us there. I was told the doctor sometimes sees patients from far away before others because of the burden and time it takes to get to the hospital. Since he knew our leader, he knew we drove a long distance to get to him. Ostensibly, this was why he saw us before others. Nonetheless, we waited some time before the entire appointment was complete. The doctor saw the boy, Stephane, then told the radiographer to see us right away. Instead, the technician left Stephane's file on the machine for several hours before our missionary leader found out. By the time he took the x-ray and by the time it was interpreted, it had been seven hours.

I felt the trip was purposeful, though, because our leader would have had to wait with only the boy's room mother. More personally, it was important that I saw how the hospital was run. I was able to see that it suffered from understaffing and a lack of administration. There were too many patients, it seemed, for the staff, more than half of whom were American medical missionaries. As far as administration goes, patients were not scheduled beforehand, which led to the longer wait times and the stress so visible on the scheduling nurse's face as he used the duct tape to organize who was seen when. I wondered, though, whether it was even plausible to have patients schedule appointments. I got the feeling that the problem was caused mostly by an overwhelmed staff, who had neither the time nor the energy to handle administrative duties. Later that evening, I was told this hospital was among the best in the country, which opened my eyes to just how much medical need there is in Haiti. Later that day, I scraped my knee and hand playing soccer, which allowed me to empathize, if only a little, with sick or injured Haitians who can't easily see a doctor like we in the United States can. That two other teammates were injured and became sick later on emphasized the point even further.