January 27
A long day has finally ended. We got here at about 7 am and went straight to the central hospital. When I say hospital, I don’t mean it like anything you’ve ever seen in Los Angeles. The guys who have been here since Day One told us that the hospital was overrun with rats. The poverty here is not to be believed. There was a tragedy in Haiti but the earthquake is only the latest chapter. Doctors from all across the world have been thrown together and are making it work at the hospital. In a short amount of time, we have gotten to know some of them and hear their stories.
I’m exhausted and about to go to sleep in a tent on concrete, so I’m just going to list some things that maybe I can expound on later:
In spite of what you’ve seen on CNN, things are not crazy down here. In fact, everyone is working together and being extremely patient. I sat and hung out with three surgeons tonight who have been here a week and they told me they’ve performed 200 operations and haven’t had to amputate a single limb. I mentioned that the impression on TV is that everyone has lost a limb. Apparently, when things first happened there were aid organizations doing the best they could, but they were in over their heads, so they amputated rather than risking surgery. That spread like wildfire and now people with fractures are afraid to come in, and instead wait until the last minute and end up with gangrene. Insanity.
February 3
We sat in on a few meetings with the medical director Joia and some of the hospital staff. Joia told me that only one penny out of every dollar that comes into Haiti as foreign aid goes to the government, and as a result the government has no power and the NGO’s [non-governmental organizations, like Partners In Health] are doing everything. But NGOs can’t run a country. There needs to be a strong, transparent government to get things done so they are fighting to change this model. It’s interesting to hear one of the executives of an NGO say that but she’s right. Ninety percent of the schools have been destroyed and over a million people are going to need rehabilitation of some sort or other. It’s incomprehensible to me how they will get out of this.
February 8
It’s very odd to be leaving Haiti on a private Gulf Stream that costs more than most of the villagers will ever see in a lifetime. Last night I woke up as I heard rain on the tent. I had left some laundry to dry and was worried of it rained that I’d have a problem with packing wet clothes. As I got out of the tent it occurred to me that I was worried about the rain getting my clothes wet and less than a mile away 20,000 people are worried about the rain for a much more important reason.
It didn’t rain very much last night after all. But in a few months time it will and when it does people will die. It’s a sad fact but it’s just that simple. Unless something is done extremely soon and money says it won’t be.
And here I sit reclined in my leather chair texting on an iPhone rocketing through the air at 34,000 feet.
Nothing makes sense.
