Where oh where is the American Red Cross?

Hi all!

I'm sitting here all sparking clean after my shower, and realizing it's the last time I will take an outdoor leukwarm moonlit shower in Haiti. Tomorrow we fly back to Miami after having a nice breakfast, renting a "taptap" (Haitian taxi) and getting a tour of Port au Prince.


Rachel and I got split up today. We had a team of 9 people and wound up being too many to go to Delmas 31, so Rachel and her team went to Petionville (a different camp from Sean Penn's) and I went to Delmas 31 with my team. On my team we had Cortney, a fourth year medical student; Ed, an EMT from Portland; Mike, an EMT from Portland, and a translator/Haitian medical student studying in England named Whites. We had a busy day, saw 146 patients in about 5 hours. I saw 33 myself, which was just about average with what everyone else did. I may be slow at home, but I'm average here. :)


Today's cases were much like the last several days', but I saw almost no pregnant women or babies. Lots of young men and women with stomachaches and headaches.

The last patient of the day was Cortney's -- a 9 year old girl with R lower quadrant abdominal pain. She was exquisitely tender and pushing on the L side made her R side hurt (a bad sign.) She didn't have a fever but we were certain we needed to at least rule out appendicitis. I called Miquette at Quisqueya, and she told us to take the girl to Grace hospital. A guy at the door of Grace hospital waved us away, saying they were full. We then drove to L'Hopital du Paix (Peace Hospital). I walked in with the mom and girl, and asked the security guard where the emergency room was. He pointed.

As I followed his finger with my eyes I couldn't believe what I saw. An open-air waiting area with dusty chairs everywhere, no lights on, nobody at any desks, nobody in any rooms. A dark, abandoned room with chairs. We then walked around the hospital until we found a room where there was some activity -- a nursery. A nurse there told me that there were no doctors in the hospital (!!!!!) and that one would be around tomorrow.

As we prepared to take our patient elsewhere we saw a man with surgical garb on. We stopped him and I spoke to him in English. He was a Cuban anesthesiologist, who said that there would be a doctor along at 7pm (it was 4pm) and said she could wait in the "emergency room." I took her temperature one last time. She was still normal. With a sigh, I walked her back to the dark dusty area and told her and her mother to wait until 7pm to see a doctor. Then I left.

I am still furious with myself over that. I should have put that kid back in the truck and driven around until I found a hospital with a physician. But here, late in the afternoon, the chances were slim that I would find such a place, and if I did, it would likely be so far away from her home that she would have a very hard time getting back. I just can't believe I left her. It's against everything I've ever been taught. I don't know how I can forgive myself.


I just hope she was seen tonight, or better yet, that we were wrong and she started feeling better and walked home. Francesca, wherever you are, I hope you're okay.

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So where is the Red Cross, anyway? We're being driven all over town and we can't find them anywhere. A Haitian will work for $10 a day. Why aren't our American donated funds ($400 million of them!) going to hire Haitians to rebuild their city? Why aren't they staffing the hospitals? The feeling around here among those who work on the ground is that the Red Cross isn't doing much. How can that be? Americans believe that when a crisis hits, the first thing to do is to give money to the Red Cross. Well, they weren't here after the earthquake when it was a matter of life and death. The Germans and the Israelis were here within 2 days, rescuing people. A lot of wealthy American doctors came here on their own, quickly, and performed amputations and C-sections on injured Haitians. But the American NGOs such as the Red Cross did a lot of meeting, thinking, planning on what to do with the money and didn't do a lot of jumping in to provide immediate help. Even now, the extent to which the American Red Cross has helped at all is barely visible.

I encourage you, the next time there's a crisis, donate to a small organization on the ground. They are the ones who are pulling the bodies from the rubble. They are the ones who are housing the medical volunteers and finding places for us to work. They are the ones who aren't turning a profit -- the amount of money they bring in helps more people per capita than any large organization can possibly do.

Tomorrow we're flying back to the US. The next time my child is sick, I will say, "I get to take my kid to the doctor." "I get to give her antibiotics." I won't take these things for granted again anytime soon.

Peace.

- Megan