Erin In Haiti – Oh baby!

Mike blogging for Erin.

Here is a satellite image of the hospital where the team is working.

The 14-member MTW Disaster Response team is now fully integrated into working at the small Adventist Hospital near the Diquini Refugee Camp. The French run the hospital and our team is working closely with them. Some of the MTW team members are working the 8am to 5pm shift with the French team. Erin and a few others are working the 5pm to 8am shift. And, still other members of the MTW team are floating back and forth.

Within five minutes of the team starting their work at the hospital a 60-year-old woman was rushed into the hospital and promptly died. This was a hint of how their first full day in the hospital would go. It is like a bad scene out of the TV show MASH – patients are stacked up in the hallways, the hospital is out of basic supplies like tubing, ventilators and oxygen, they have no interpreters, people are dying, nurses and doctors are running from place to place.

In the team’s first full day they delivered four babies. Erin delivered one baby on her own without assistance from other nurses or doctors. The mother spoke only French and Erin speaks only English and Spanish. The baby was delivered on the ground, outside the hospital, on a tarp.

Two people were rushed via ambulance to other sites with Erin pumping away at the manual ventilator bags in the back of the ambulance as it rushed through rubble cluttered, unlit streets at night. Erin started 23 IVs for dehydration. The team worked on keeping an escaped convict with tuberculosis alive for 1 ½ hours.

Erin said, “It is a nut house. I am amazed. I don’t know how we are doing it. It is bad. We are all tired and need sleep.”

Dennis Hamilton, the Team Leader, is “working his butt off” and he is never seen sleeping. Three of the team members were struck ill on Monday resulting in vomiting and diarrhea. As of Tuesday morning all three are doing better, but still feeling weak.

Erin concluded her report with, “I am covered in blood, amniotic fluid and phlegm, but we have no showers, so I’m going to take a shower with baby wipes and crawl into my sleeping bag.”

Prayer needs: 1) Pray that the illness impacting the team is halted and that the three sick team members recover quickly. 2) Pray for extra levels of energy for every member of the team. 3) Pray that interpreters and basic medical supplies can be found.