cholera

On Thursday morning, I woke up earlier than normal and decided that I would go to mass. I haven't been in the morning in a long time. I go every Sunday to the evening mass because I don't have to wake up early and it's not a funeral. Every single morning, except on rare occasion, there is a funeral for the children and adults who have died in our hospitals the previous day. Needless to say, it's a depressing way to start the day, but since I hadn't been in a while, I felt it would be good to go.

I walked into the chapel just before Father Rick rang the bell to start. The chapel is shaped like a big oval, with benches around the perimeter and the caskets and guerneys in the middle. There was a large group of foreign doctors there, the majority of our long term volunteers, a couple hospital employees and four family members there to grieve. Father Rick and our absolutely amazing group of singers began with the songs I've gotten to know pretty well. Even though I don't go to the funerals every morning, I hear them on my way to work, we sing them at memorials and other burials and sometimes even at parties. Ok so singing our songs for the dead at parties might be a little inappropriate, but when it's the priest that starts the song... what can you do??  

Father Rick burned the incense and sang our first song and then he went to the pulpit to talk about Gena and Farrah, the two women who lay in front of us. Both of their stories were horribly tragic, Gena was a sixteen year old girl who came to St. Luke so sick that they were unable to save her. Farrah was pregnant, she came to us with a severe case of cholera and between being transferred from St. Damien (because she was pregnant) to St. Philomene (because she had cholera) she died. Her baby didn't survive either. Father Rick continued the mass, leading the group in these gorgeous songs, both in Creole and English and I did my best to hold it together. I thought about that this is not only a loss of human life, but a young expectant mother who died so young, from this brutal disease that only showed up in Haiti a year and a half ago. I left the mass devastated, but with a renewed energy for finding the supplies that our doctors and nurses need to save people from this awful illness.

I've known that the number of patients we're seeing with cholera has been going up and up over the last month. We've doubled if not tripled the amount of Ringers Lactate, the IV solution used to treat cholera, that we're sending to St. Philomene CTC (Cholera Treatment Center). During the dry season the incidence of cholera had gotten so low, I had held on to the hope that cholera wouldn't be so bad this year. Unfortunately, the rains came a little early this year and we're getting a preview into exactly how bad it's going to be. Making matters much worse is that the majority of the organizations in Haiti have left. There two-year disaster funding is up and they are gone or have significantly cut back their programs. Our biggest donor of materials is no longer providing supplies to treat cholera. When I arrived here, each week we were getting at least 2400 bags of Ringers, 1800 IV catheters, hand sanitizer, oral rehydration salts, bleach... everything we needed. Now we are scrambling to keep up with the demand for materials from the CTC and the rainy season has just begun.

A room at St. Philomene, our CTC

Lucxoit and I posing for donor pictures at the CTC pharmacy

That afternoon, Father Rick called an emergency cholera meeting with the heads of the hospital and our supply team, to try and figure out what we can do about the rise in cholera. The doctors started the meeting, confirming that they have been testing the patients arriving with diarrhea and it is indeed cholera. They also said that they have doubled the number of patients in the last two weeks and so we're short on staff and materials. They're afraid that we're going to reach capacity of the CTC, 72 beds, within the next month. The other CTC that was in our area was run by Doctors Without Borders and it's now closed so there are even more people are coming to us. We discussed putting up big tents and treating people outside on cots just to keep up with the number of patients we could soon be getting. Father Rick talked about the need to open a part of our new hospital in Cite Soleil to help with the inundation at St. Philomene. Our doctors and nurses are prepared this time, they talked about how practiced they are at diagnosing the severity of cholera. This time around, they said they're going to do an even better job at gathering patients statistics, to help us know who is coming to us and how we can work to prevent instead of treat.

Yesterday morning, I went down to Cite Soleil with Father Rick to put up fans and lights at St. Mary, our new hospital. The hospital is not yet hooked up to a generator, so we brought a mini one and a lot of extension cords to hook up the fans and lights to equip the area to treat cholera. We came back to the house around lunchtime, I went to work writing emails to anybody and everybody trying to get supplies. Father Rick headed back out to buy cots and put them at St. Mary. While I was down at the hospital, I talked with some of the guys overseeing the building of the hospital who told me about their group Action Chretien. It is an organization of people who grew up in this notoriously bad area who are against the violence and gangs and are trying to help their neighbors. They are the ones who made the plans for the hospital, are overseeing the construction and will manage it's operations. I've only ever been there on Saturdays, but they're all there, working in the hot sun to get this thing up and running. They're doing a phenomenal job and it was cute to see these really rough gangster guys talking about how Father Rick is their savior. The hospital is simple and small, but you look out the window and see that people are living in mucky garbage, in huts made out of sticks and rusted, corrugated sheet metal strewn together with scrap wire. I can see why this project, organized and carried out by the leaders of the neighborhood, is a huge accomplishment and why they are so grateful to Father Rick and St. Luke for their funding.

Driving up the road to St. Mary Hospital

Father Rick putting up fans to prepare for cholera treatment

Looking out the window of St. Mary Hospital

On a separate note, a friend of mine here directed a film that debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival last night. It's called Baseball in the Time of Cholera and it has a ton of footage from the tent camp next to our hospital and I actually went to watch one of their baseball practices last week. We got a copy of the DVD, so hopefully I'll get to watch it soon, but you can watch the preview for it at www.baseballinthetimeofcholera.com