ONE THOUSAND VOLUNTEERS
I just returned from Haiti and again was amazed at the many changes since my last visit one month ago. We were blessed to have over 70 volunteers on site which made me check to see our total number since the earthquake. I was surprised to see that as of yesterday we have had 955 volunteers since the earthquake. By the end of April it will be well over 1000! What a great testimony to the Christian spirit that is alive and well in the US.
We now have 162 patients from the earthquake and 81 patients from our area in northern Haiti. There are 40 patients that are anxiously awaiting discharge this week which will leave us with a total of 203 inpatients. When patients are ready for discharge we give them the option of settling in our area or returning to Port au Prince. The majority choose to return to Port au Prince where their families are located. We give them food, money and a tent when we discharge them and provide transportation by bus to Port au Prince.
As we discharge patients we are using the tents for different purposes. The first tent has now become the outpatient clinic with 8 exam rooms and a triage area. A canopy was built between the wall and the tent to create a waiting area for the 200+ outpatients that are seen every day. The second tent is used for post op patients which has allowed us to clear the hallways of the hospital of patients and increase the space for our inpatient medical and maternity patients. Our hospital has returned to a unified staff of Haitians and volunteers working side by side.
During my stay we were blessed to welcome Cardinal O’Malley to Crudem/Hopital Sacre Coeur. He arrived by helicopter from Port au Prince with the Papal Nuncio and Jim O’Connor KMKob and Roger Jean Charles MDKM. There was a great celebration since it was the first time a Cardinal had ever come to the area. He visited with the patients and volunteers and was visibly moved by the spirit of the children with amputations. He said Mass in front of the tents so all the patients could participate. There are some great pictures and a video of the visit on the Cardinal’s blog: www.cardinalseansblog.org.
As we move forward the number of our volunteers will decrease to 30 to 40 a week over the next 2 weeks and we have need for primary care physicians for late May and through the summer. Our specialty surgical teams have returned because the ORs are no longer needed on a regular basis for orthopedic surgery. The first team to return was the Urology team led by Dale Peterson. They saw over 120 patients in their clinic the first day and have 2 weeks full of surgery scheduled. In early May we will have a general surgery and ENT team arrive. I return the end of May with an Ophthalmology team and a plastic surgery team arrives in June.
We are proceeding with our renovation and expansion plans. Tim Traynor has returned and is guiding the many projects. The prosthetic lab outfitted with a donation from the American Association of Malta and Malteser will arrive next week and the donated new 6000 ft storage building called a sprung building will arrive in May. When the storage building is assembled we will move all of our supplies to that building and will institute a bar code system so we can track our supplies and our needs thanks to a donation from the Federal Association of the Order of Malta.
I have received inquires about the financial status of our hospital since an article appeared on MSNBC and the Miami Herald describing the closing of a hospital in Port au Prince called Hopital Sacre Coeur/CDTI. This hospital was owned by a Haitian radiologist who tried to expand with the help of a NGO to help the earthquake victims. Apparently the NGO was unable to continue it’s financial support and the hospital was forced to close.
We are blessed with support from the 3 US associations of the Order of Malta and their many individual knights and dames as well as many other individual donors. In fact over 95% of our financial support comes from individual donors. We have been in existence for 24 years thanks to this support and plan to continue providing care for at least another 24 years. We are proud that we are probably the only non government hospital in Haiti that is run by an all Haitian administration and staff. We feel that Hopital Sacre Coeur is the perfect prototype for how medical care can be delivered in Haiti and are hopeful that it will be used as an example in the rebuilding effort. Thank you for making all of this possible and for your continued support of Crudem/Hopital Sacre Coeur.
Peter Kelly MD
President, Crudem Foundation Inc.
www.crudem.org
