Sunday, August 1, 2010

She had lost everything - her husband, her home, her parents and both of her legs. But the 30-year-old woman has to survive for the sake of her six-year-old daughter.  

“There was no wheelchair for her,” said Dubai-based surgeon Marc Sinclair who has recently returned from a medical mission to the heart of Haiti’s disaster zone.

“What can you do with these people? You can’t just throw them out of the hospital even when their medical care is finished - they have nowhere to go.

“We were waiting as long as we could before discharging people because of that.”

Orthopaedic surgeon Sinclair and colleagues Dr Chris Whately, Dr Jozef Bielek, operating room nurse Gillian Beale and emergency room nurse Belinda Gygi, spent a week treating victims of the 7.0 magnitude quake and surviving on rations.

 They performed dozens of operations -  re-setting fractured bones, amputat-ing limbs and treating infected wounds. Children were among the injured but for them malnutrition is becoming a major threat.

“We took some of our own supplies,”said Sinclair.

“There is not enough food for anyone, not even the doctors so we had freeze-dried rations from the military. We took a load of granola bars with us and were giving them out to the kids.

“They have nothing, just the sky over their heads every night.”

Sinclair and his team bedded down under mosquito nets on the roof of the dilapidated community hospital in Port-au-Prince.

It was damaged in the quake but the staff had managed to rally round and make sure operating rooms were able to function.

Medical staff slept under the stars and said the atmosphere was one of camaraderie.

Sinclair said: “There were about 20 of us on the roof - it was a real campfire atmosphere.

Everybody was pleased to be there and able to do what they can with the supplies that they have.”  

Sinclair’s mission was organised by NGOs Little Wings and Cure International.

They returned on February 10 and UAE Red Crescent’s mobile field hospital in Haiti ended its treatment programme yesterday after treating 1,100 people and dishing out basic medicines to 9,000 people.

But as aid agencies begin to leave and the spotlight starts to shift away from the crisis, Sinclair says it is vital long-term efforts are made to continue to support the millions of people affected.

“They feel the government isn’t doing anything and they feel hopeless. It’s hard to see how the people are going to get out of this,” he said.

nichola.jones@7days.ae