Haiti: A day earlier and baby Katiana and her mother wouldn’t have made it
Feb. 5th 2010Gorta has created a €250,000 ‘Haiti Humanitarian Relief Fund’. Recognising that one of the first critical needs is emergency medical assistance, Gorta has initially partnered with the Irish Red Cross and has provided an immediate €50,000 to help alleviate the unprecedented human suffering and trauma. Here is an example of just how critical the international relief effort is.
“When they carried the mother in from the camp the baby's head was already out”, Finnish Red Cross nurse Vivi Virvi begins the dramatic story about how baby Katiana came into the chaotic world that is post-quake Haiti.
A day earlier and Katiana and her mother Katloue Josef wouldn’t have made it. The new German/Finnish field hospital had just been opened hours before the emergency case arrived.
Very sick
“The mother was very sick afterwards, she had a rapid fall in blood pressure and was having serious difficulty breathing”, says Vivi. “She stayed in the operating theatre for 90 minutes and then she collapsed again. We gave her oxygen and put her on an IV drip to get the blood pressure stabilized."
“The father stayed outside our surgical tent the whole time, holding the baby.”
Katiana, who has three brothers and two sisters, will stay in the hospital for another few days while her mother recovers. Then it’s back to the makeshift shelter the family has been crowded into since the earthquake hit.
On the second day of her life Katiana was picked up and cuddled by Mme Michaele Gideon, President of Haiti Red Cross, who was at the hospital to meet with senior staff.
“Merci a Dieu,” whispered Mme Gideon as she held Katiana. “Thank you God, thank you.”
Capacity to serve 250,000 people
The field hospital is located in a football stadium in the sprawling slum of Carrefour. It has 120 beds for in-patients and the capacity to serve a community of 250,000. It offers all services one expects to find at a normal hospital: two operating theaters with anesthesiology, an internal medicine department, pediatric and maternity care, sterilization rooms, X-ray facilities, a fully functioning laboratory and a full stock of WHO approved medications, as well as the delivery room.
The hospital comes with its own potable water plant, laundry services, garbage collection and an incinerator so as not to place any kind of burden on the resources of the surrounding community.
Disease prevention is also crucial following a disaster of this magnitude particularly given the density of the population of Port-au-Prince. With so many people living together in make-shift tent camps, even minor diseases can present complex health care challenges if they spread rapidly from family to family.
Your support is vital to help the people of Haiti. Please give whatever you can to Gorta's Haiti Humanitarian Relief Fund now.
©IFRC Words and pictures by Joe Lowry in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
