By Tom Tracy
Catholic News Service

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CNS) — On her second medical mission to Haiti since the Jan. 12 earthquake, Patty Skoglund, a disaster response expert with Scripps Health in San Diego, sees a shift from surgical focus to chronic-care. The hospital team saw 200 patients at St. Francis de Sales Hospital in the center of the most devastated part of the Haitian capital March 1. The hospital has been caring for 65 patients — about half its normal number — at any given time, under tents and tarps.

The Scripps Health team treated patients with malaria, malnutrition, dehydration, infections and tetanus. They also saw patients with stress-related complications such as ulcers, stomach illnesses and high blood pressure.

“It is earthquake-related in reference to lack of care available right now,” Skoglund said. “The first team we came with was surgical-focused and we did about 20 surgeries a day. Today they are doing about five to six cases a day.”

The team also treated a few people with broken bones and serious lacerations.
Working in seven-day shifts, the rotating medical teams from California have marveled at the quiet resilience of the Haitian people. Scripps went to Haiti at the invitation of Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the papal nuncio in Haiti, and in connection with Catholic Relief Services.

“I think the doctors were surprised at the volume and the type of medicine they were seeing and in the cultural difference in the patient response,” Skoglund said. “The Haitians are more stoic and their pain tolerance is much higher than what we see in the U.S.”

Dr. Edgar Gamboa, chief of surgery at El Centro Regional Medical Center in San Diego, who arrived at St. Francis Hospital for the second time since the earthquake, said he was pleased to learn the hospital now had semi-permanent outdoor tent facilities, regular patient meals made possible by CRS, portable showers and toilets.

But he was alarmed that three patients recently died of tetanus, a preventable infectious disease which enters the body through open wounds. It’s a situation that underscores the dire need for tetanus vaccinations in Haiti, he said.

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