He tells me that their "patient tents" are well cared for. However the team suspected that the surgical team from the Dominican Republic could use some help, so they made rounds in some of their tents. They found many patients in need of surgery that were not yet cared for, so they have moved some of those patients over to their tents.
Today, more patients arrived--seems that will continue to happen every day.
The conditions are still rudimentary. There are 4 port-a-potties for everyone--the patients, displaced persons, staff, etc. Today they were able to open up some functional bathrooms for the staff. Shane is amazed that the Haitian people don't try to use the staff facilities. They also don't try to get into the teams' food supply, which they all have stored in one room. He says the Haitian people are incredibly grateful for their help, but Shane is so overcome by their desperate situations.
Shane says the homes in the countryside are so terrible. They consist of cinderblocks hastily pasted together with cement. Jove, the general surgery chief resident on the team who is from Haiti, went to Port au Prince yesterday, and reports what he saw was devastating. Jove's family lives in Boston, but his father was visiting Haiti when the earthquake hit--luckily he was okay. Jove said that there were people sitting in the streets of Port au Prince, with rotting wounds. They don't want to go get help in fear of amputation, which is almost a death sentence in Haiti, where there is no hope for rehab or prostheses. Shane says they are in desperate need for crutches.
Shane hopes that there will be a team to follow theirs--he says all they have done will be for nothing if there isn't continued care for their patients. While they need surgeons (specifically ortho trauma surgeons), there is great need for nurses who can tend to the wounds. He hopes the help will come--if not from Hershey, from elsewhere. The conditions are rudimentary, but the need is so great.
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