Evelyne, me, Solencia, and Mme Grimard (some of my colleagues)
Last night I went to the Cap Haitien gymnasium where I was given a tour of the cholera treatment center by the director for Doctors without Borders (MSF) for northern Haiti. MSF has been here for a week and are now seeing only a quarter of the deaths in Cap Haitien compared to the previous week. So much of this has to do with the importance of understanding how easily treatable this disease is, if only patients are hydrated quickly! The MSF director told me that the hospital wasn’t quite where they would like it yet, but they were pleased with the improvements. From my perspective it is so much better than the nightmare I lived through in Hinche.
As soon as the roadblocks clear they will be bringing tents to set up outside the gym to enable them to expand to over 400 cholera beds. They are now coordinating all cholera treatment in Cap Haitien, although they do work with the health ministry. They have also been working in Limbe, the other area where we would like to send volunteers. They only knew about the two hospitals there, not the 60-bed (and rising) center at Seminaire Limbe, five km from Limbe. That is where Dr. Steve has been working tirelessly and with few staff. MSF plans to return to Limbe (again, as soon as the roadblocks clear). They are coming back to the hotel now so I’m going to see how soon they think they can get through. Dr. Steve only has enough IV fluid for the next 24 hours.
Since we don’t usually work with short-term medical volunteers, I’m glad that MSF has accepted to take them under their wing here on the ground – we will just need to coordinate flights, airport pickups, meals, and housing, which will be part of my job the next few weeks.
MSF has also offered to train our community health workers on “bucket chlorine.” This means that a person will be stationed at each community water source (if there are too many some will be closed). The worker will have a concentrated chlorine solution and will put a specified amount in each bucket of water collected. In other countries this has reduced the cholera outbreaks to two or three days. However, due to the already widespread nature of Haiti’s epidemic (now in every region of the country) we will likely need people to do this work for a month or two.
