AIDS Issues Update:
Charles King: “Some Haitians Have Given Up”
King passes on the notes of frontline doctor Dr. Marie Nomil. Nomil says that delays have convinced some Haitians that international aid will never really arrive. She also recounts an emblematic story of a woman whose leg is cast without being set or X-rayed. AIDS meds are in short supply, and Edner’s frustration is mounting quickly.
I miss my latest blog deadline because I have no material, except a lyrical rant Edner has sent and my own anxieties and frustrations. (It seems in asking Edner to write about his experiences I awakened not the journalist, but the angry poet.) I’m also concerned because I haven’t seen anything but a few cryptic messages from on the ground in over 20 hours. I try calling every hour or so, but can’t get a connection.
When I get a phone call from Edner on my cell phone, I quickly drop the conference call I am on. “Everything ok?” I ask. “Yes,” he says, “except the ball has broken on my Blackberry. I can’t send e-mails.” So that explains it.
I ask for a quick update. Jose Diaz, an Argentinean doctor who works for Housing Works as a program Vice President, gets on the line. He rattles off a list of antiretroviral AIDS medications we need but don’t have in stock. Atripla, Norvir in capsule (we have the liquid version which is just nasty) and Ritonavir. He tells me we are also almost completely out of antibiotics. “We have one bottle of Cipro left,” he says.
Oddly, some 19 boxes of the items we had trucked to Miami somehow made it in to the Port-au-Prince airport separated for the rest. Unfortunately, none of the medications were in those boxes. Instead we now have an oversupply of syringes, small gloves, blood tubes, (we don’t have a lab yet to work with), baby food, and some clothes that had been thrown in a filler….and two boxes of hospital gowns? Who put those on the truck?
I speak to Dr. Nomil. She couldn’t get to a working fax machine, so I type as she reads me her latest update.
I have been in Port-au-Prince for one week now. It’s nearly three weeks since the earthquake. By now I expected the people would have had better access to food, water, and a tent. It isn’t so. I keep hearing the same stories over and over whenever I speak to the average Haitian. It is indeed sad, and for the life of me I do not understand what is so difficult about transporting food from point A to point B.
It isn’t the fact that the materials are not there, for I see them in boxes whenever I enter the UN compound. I have driven through an extensive part of the city and the neighborhoods on nearly a daily basis. So far I have only witnessed one food distribution. That was four days ago just outside our family health center in downtown Port-au-Prince.
People are desperate for shelter, food and water. They are relatively calm and almost in some instances have given up on the outside aid. I say that because there is a lot of activity around the city and the surrounding areas. If not for the shattered buildings, the smell of death, which is ever so slight now, long lines at the gas stations, banks and cellular phone companies, one would not easily pick up on the fact that a major disaster occurred nearly three weeks prior. Why? Folks are trying to collect themselves.
The street vendors are still selling their goods amidst the rubble on broken sidewalks, and the traffic congestion seems typical for downtown Port-au-Prince. A very disturbing thing one can’t help but notice is how people’s lives are no longer private. The majority of the populations is homeless, living in and sleeping in the streets. I see a few tents, but honestly, it isn’t a common scene. What one will see is that bed sheets are carefully arranged on a wooden stick to form a tent.
People are literally on top of people in the tent cities. I thank God it has not rained while I have been here but who knows how long that will last. By now I can say I really wish that I would not hear that any of the patients are sleeping in the streets, especially the pregnant ones.
The other surprising or should I say crazy thing is at the clinic people who have not gotten any medical care are still showing up with fractures and of course infected wounds that have not been cared for. Worse than that, a woman showed up three days ago at the family health center with her right leg in a cast and an X-ray in her hand. The leg had been cast some time ago—but the X-ray of her leg had been done just one day prior to when I met her, after the leg had already been cast. Apparently things are done backwards in some cases here.
To my dismay, her leg fracture had not, in fact, been set, or if it was whomever did it had no clue about what he or she was doing. I took her to the University of Miami field hospital, where I have established some relationships (nothing official, this is purely by entering the gate and introducing myself to nurses doctors, technicians, whomever. I figure if they see my face enough and I tell them what our clinic is about the more likely I can get my patients in for specialty care). I really don’t feel I have any hope at the local hospitals. She is quickly scheduled for surgery the same day. I have to leave. I want to follow her, but she will probably be discharged before I can get back.
The patients are so appreciative and thankful. For me that is my repayment.
I ask Edner how the rice voucher program is going. He was at the UN Cluster meeting where the process was being worked out. “I don’t know yet,” he says. They aren’t giving vouchers to any of our people.” I ask him why. “Our people are in special populations,” he says. “Orphans, disabled and people with AIDS. They haven’t figured out how to give the vouchers out to these groups, so they are giving them out to the general population first. There is a UN meeting Thursday to discuss this.” As Dr. Nomil said, “Apparently things are done backwards in some cases here.”
I decide to include Edner’s rant:
My day is made of frustration and compassion…
Frustration for not being able to deliver as planned. Frustration with assessments after 20 days of devastation. Frustration because I wish I could distribute more food. Frustration because life can be unfair. Frustration to see how others are taking advantage of this situation…frustration because you have to fight every single minute.
(Mwen tout bouke….) [I am completely exhausted]
Frustration because I wish I have never had to beg…
Frustration because they don’t care…
Frustration because you just can’t trust them…
This is a call for your compassion…your understanding, your sense of responsibility, your sense of humanity. The time has come for you to make a difference in life on Haiti.
Hey!!!! Are you listening?
Your inside source for in-depth activism news is updated daily by Staff Writer, Diana Scholl.
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