Haiti Trauma Relief Fund

Haiti 2010

The devastation of the earthquake is impressive.

The official death toll now is placed at approximately 250,000. The total number of injured approaches  400,000. The earthquake divided the country  North and South. The fault line went through the hills and was 15 feet wide and extremely deep. The major roads were not passable and the locals began throwing rocks into the fault line where the roads were but it took them well over one week of throwing rocks into the abyss before the road could be crossed.

Les Cayes is a town which is extremely poor on the southern and western end of the island. It has a population of about 50,000 but this has swelled to 100,000 with the variety of refugees which have come from the northern and eastern parts of the country.

I left on Friday night at 1 AM although we were originally planning to leave Saturday morning  because of the snow that was coming. The Haiti Trauma Relief Fund and Spinal Solutions was instrumental in providing transportation via their Falcon 10 jet and turboprop Conquest Cessna.

The airport in Les Cayes is extremely small and did not allow for jet landings. We arrived in Haiti  at approximately 5 PM.

The area surrounding the airport is quite isolated yet there was a large fenced in area with approximately 50 small children  screaming and begging for food. We provided what small supplies of candy and apples that were available but had to stop doing this because after a period of time, they started to tear down the security fences.

The drive from the airport to the hospital is approximately 20 minutes. The number of people on the roads was staggering. This is an area that was not affected by the earthquake but clearly was becoming a refugee camp.

There was one point where the Hospital of the Immaculate Conception where we were working had used up its resources and the supply shed was empty.

In this town of 50,000 people, there are two hospitals. The central hospital was staffed with Cubans and Spaniards.The specialty hospital, where we were stationed, was  originally used as an ophthalmology and ENT Hospital.

The performance of an amputation is virtually the same way that it would have been performed in the Civil War.  Basic principles of pre-admission trauma management were not in place.  Multiple patient's had casts and external fixators applied without any documentation of the location of the fracture or its position or angulation. 

Several patient's had sat with a displaced intertrochanteric fracture for a displaced complex pelvic fracture which desperately needed open reduction internal fixation but would absolutely not have been possible at the limited operating facility of the small hospital. 

The people were gracious and grateful.  They continue to need our help with basic supplies. This disaster is only beginning to unfold its story!

R. F. Davis MD
Assoc. Prof. Orthopedics & Neurosurgery
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore Washington Medical Center