Haiti Blog - January 26

26/01/2010

(January 26 - 9am) It was a relief to read the sign on the wall: no dead bodies after 3:30 p.m. My watch showed it was 4 p.m.  Thankfully, when I poked my head into the morgue at the Hôpital Universitē de l’Ētat de Haiti, also known as the General Hospital, the room was empty.

Outside, though, the ground was grimly sticky underfoot – a reminder of how many bodies had been taken to the public morgue for disposal since the earthquake struck Haiti nearly two weeks ago.

I’d come to the public hospital, one of the largest  in Haiti, to look at the work Oxfam had been doing there.  My colleague, Karine Deniel, a public health specialist focusing on preparedness and emergency response work, had been called to the hospital the week before.  

She had been visibly shocked by what she saw: the hospital was packed with more than 1,000 patients, many of whom desperately needed surgery. There was no running water and no electricity. 

Outside the morgue, she said, piles of bodies were laid out, covered with flies. There was no water close by for doctors to make plaster casts for those with broken limbs and the water she did see was in a bucket used to mop the floor. It was black. “It smelled bad; it smelt of death,” she said.

Oxfam installed a 5,000 litre water bladder in the hospital, and also trucked water to the site so that soiled surgery clothes and bedding could be washed, the kitchen could re-open, and workers in the morgue could wash down the floors and lessen the putrefying smell.

“Oxfam has helped,” said Jencia Josena, one of the laundrywomen.  “Before we had no water, no soap.”

Staff told me nothing could be washed in the hospital after the earthquake struck until Oxfam trucked in water more than a week later.  

“Before Oxfam came it was a mess,” said laundry operator, Jean-Robert Deuys. “In the surgery room, doctors had blood stains over their clothes.”

Many patients still remain outside the main hospital buildings, many of which were badly destroyed, being treated in tents. They’re scared to go indoors, for fear of after-shocks.

The dedication of staff working there both impressed and humbled me. From the laundry washers to the kitchen staff to the steady stream of volunteer medics like George Williams, from New York City, who works in the triage area. 

“As bad as things are, this is the best humanitarian effort that I have ever seen,” he told me, praising the “phenomenal” Haitian doctors he had worked with. 

“It’s the spirit, the humanitarian effort reaching out from all over the world.”

** Caroline Gluck is with Oxfam