REPORT FROM Gressier HAITI APRIL 18th, 2010.
Anitra Thorhaug (Laureate 1987) Greater Caribbean Energy and Environment Foundation.
We fitted a man today in Gressier with a prosthetic leg, who had not walked in 20 years. He was so happy he walked home for the first time in 20 years so his neighbors would see him walking.
This we have a 3/4 of a prosthetic foot being made for a little girl who was born with a partial foot and has never walked. She is so looking forward to getting this and playing with the other kids.
This week in Gressier, most of the trash and garbage accumulated in the water flow areas and acting as dams to the water flow of the rainy season which is starting has been finally picked up with our garbage bags and local labor paid for in part by UNDP with Dr. R. Jackson supervising where the garbage needed to get picked up and carted to the Carrefour garbage site.
Dr. Jackson's Gressier classes in preventative medicine and preventative public health, perhaps the first in Haiti, have begun in the schools to children and in the orphanages, as well as to Gressier women's groups IN CREOLE. Disease control information is being taught with priorities that the diseases which come from spring rains and with the wet and flooding conditions can be overcome by each family. Water born diseases, insect vectors, person to person transmission, and environmentally engendered diseases are the first priorities we have. Next comes diseases, not treated for Gressier people during their whole lives, such as diabetes, eye and hearing disabilities, and finally heart and high blood pressure problems.
Dr. Jack Allison has been busy recording his new health songs written for Gressier and all of Haiti in English and Haiti such as "Mama, don't sleep in the gullies, your babies may float out to sea”, "Wash your Hands" and " Boil your drinking water". There are Mosquito/malaria and AIDS songs from Allison's wildly successful African health songs, which we have translated from Chichewa into Creole. The University of Miami Communications center has agreed to have a Haitian band back up to Allison's and Pierre Beaubrun's voice accompanied by two Haitian ten-year-old girls singing back-up. Then they will put these health songs on their 9 sister radio stations in Haiti to be public service announcements. THE RAINS ARE COMING WE NEED TO GET PEOPLE ON DRY LAND, OUT OF THE RIVER BEDS AND FLOOD ZONES. SLUMPING, MUD SLIDES, AND DEBRIS SLIDES ARE TO BE AVOIDED BY PREPARATION. Let us all work together to get this done.
Here is a recent report from Dr. Barry Nathan, MD pediatric emergency expert from Ann Arbor, Michigan who along with two nurses from Wisconsin carried out the following:
"We would estimate that I saw 50-100 children a day. The vast majority had minor illness like asthma, scabies, worms, fungus. A large number had anxiety. The "adult" docs saw many with STDs, and I also saw my share of this as well. I saw one child at an orphanage who had a pretty extensive second degree burn which had been seen at some other clinic, and not well cared for there. “
"I saw many inguinal hernias as did the "adult" docs. They need surgery,
but there was no where to send them, at least that I knew of. I saw a quake related broken foot, fully healed, deformed, needing referral. I saw a child with asymmetric swelling of his foot, know idea what from. (Note by AT: this could be elephantitis, Dr. Nathan agreed. It is still rampant there. Catholic Relief Service had a group doing research in the coastal area.)
I saw a child with unilateral leg wasting. No idea why. I saw a patient with possible Pott's disease and severe spinal deformity, and another child with hydrocephalus who had already gotten a shunt, I think at the UM clinic in PaP. I saw a patient with marasmus. Mom had no access to food. I sent her to UM hospital; they turned her away due to not being quake related, as they did with several others of the above mentioned cases." Barry Nathan, MD"
Contributions to help us obtain physicians’ airfare to give treatment the injured and suffering for the relief necessary for large scale flooding not to occur can be sent to our web site on www.gceef.org utilizing our "donate button". We also need money for medicines, simple medical supplies including old glasses. These contributions are the sole source to help all this effort. Our efforts get matching labor of physicians and nurses and now geologists and materials and medicines result in getting help to the suffering Haitians of at least 3.5 times more than your dollar. We need funds for generators, latrines, cots for patients, and food and transport for doctors. Rehabilitation is also commencing with farmers obtaining seeds and farm implements destroyed in the earthquake so food production can commence. Please help the Haitians. Contact Anitra Thorhaug or Andrew Oerke. andoerke@gceef.org; athorhaug@gceef.org. See our web page to donate www.gceef.org.
