I just got word from my Mom, who turns 50 today (Happy Birthday, Mom!), that she is headed to Haiti next week to deliver medical aid with an Amway aid group from Grand Rapids. She is a nurse anesthetist, so she told me she is going to be delivering primarily local anesthetic for amputations while she is there.
Wow. Go Mom.
She is going to be bunking with other doctors and nurses from GR, and Amway is going to fly her and the other medical professionals going with her down in their corporate jet, which has already made numerous runs to Port-au-Prince delivering food aid, medical supplies, and other essentials for the Haitian people.
We were discussing on the phone whether all of the aid pouring in to Haiti right now is going to help or hurt Haiti as a nation in the long run; obviously, she said, they need help right now. But what if we are giving so much help that they can't stand on their own two feet after all of the doctors pack up their equipment and technical prowess and get back to their practices other places in the world, she asked. I inquired as to whether or not she would be training Haitian nurses while she was there, and she said not as far as she knew; she said she was just there to clear the back log of people needing medical attention, especially now that Haiti has endured another intense aftershock yesterday.
After acute medical and basic survival needs are dealt with in Haiti, when can they start helping themselves? How does this get addressed in Haiti's existing governmental institutions so that they are better equipped to deal with a disaster in the future? That remains to be seen.
The link below is to an incredible news story on CNN; an emergency physician reports that the body is incredibly resilient in the face of adversity, and a healthy individual can last almost two weeks without food or water. Unfathomable.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/20/haiti.earthquake.survivors/index.html?hpt=C1
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