Eben Ezer Hospital

The "hospital" was not at all what we expected, or what we were told. A once full-functioning in patient hospital with a sugery center, x-ray machine, EKG, and delivery room, is now a stone building covered in dust with the pediatric center being used as a tiny make-shift clinic and a small pharmacy with meager supplies. Luckily, when we arrived, there were 2 American doctors working in the clinic who were able to show us the ropes. It was their last morning in the clinic, they had been here for 10 days giving assistance. They gave us a quick overview of the needs... almost every woman has a yeast infection, and they do not do gynecological exams anywhere else in this country, so it was our responsibility to perform them on any woman complaining of dysuria, most of the children had worms, every person was anemic, dehydrated, and tachycardic, many of the women have no appetite, and this is most likely due to malnutritian and lack of vitamins...we should give them vitamins. And so on, and so forth. We saw patients with them in the morning...a small girl who had been in a car accident with a scalp laceration that we needed to stich up, a woman with really bad cervicitis, a young girl whom we discovered was pregnant, children with upper respiratory infections, etc. Then the doctors left us at noon and we were on our own!
Patients only really come to the clinic from 8am-2pm, and we have the afternoon "off", so we spent it exploring the compound and the hospital. We were given a tour of the once-functioning hospital and realized the potential of this place, if only it could get up and running again!! We were told that, after the hurricanes 2 years ago which wiped out much of Gonaives and destroyed part of the hospital, the government sent doctors to work at the hospital. However, there was corruption amongst these doctors and many of them just took the government wages and abandoned the hospital and all the suffering people. Since then, the hospital lost steam...the workers dissapated, the inpatient wards were abandoned, and everything was left, covered in dust. Just recently, they have hired a new Haitian doctor who lived in Port-au-Prince but was origingally from Gonaives. She came here after the earthquake to try and help her "people". Gonaives has essentially suffered twice over, first with the hurricanes...there is a massive lake just down the road from us, which once was a flourishing town. Now, next to the hospital there is a tent city for all the persons who lost their homes. The tents are poorly made and leave much to be desired in terms of a "home". And now, with the earthquake...although not damaged the way Port-au-Prince was, Gonaives has taken on the burden of all the displaced, hungry, sick, and injured. They estimate the city has accepted 35,000 people since the earthquake, and it is not a large city. Many families have adopted orphans or taken in relatives who have no home. Their income has not grown and neither has their land, and now they have many more mouths to feed. One of the directors at the hospital has himself taken in 9 orphans and is struggling to clothe, feed, and send to school his 9 new children as well as his own 4 daughters. The needs are great, we see malnourished children with obvious Kwashiokor everyday around the hospital. Their black hair turning orange, their belly's protruding, their stick thin legs and arms.... We even had a little boy yesterday in the clinic who was so malnurished that his legs and face were swelling due to lack of protein in his blood.
So during the tour of the hospital, we were shown a dark, dust-covered room they mentioned was the "supply room". Jenna and I began gingerly lifting the lids of the boxes, brushing aside clouds of dust, and came across a great discovery! There were boxes stacked ontop of boxes of untouched medical supplies! An entire room full, just waiting to be cleaned off and put to good use! How could all of these much-need supplies just be sitting here collecting dust?! They had EVERYTHING! From surgery kits, to medicaitons, more bandages and wound care supplies than you could imagine, daipers, suturing kits, urinary catheters, crutches, wheelchairs...everything you could think of that a fully functioning hospital could use! We found our new project...we would see patients in the morning and then in the afternoons we would attack this supplie room, dust everything off, and get things on shelves to start being used again. This would be our lasting contribution....the first steps in bringing back to life a much needed hospital in a struggling hospital.
We began tackling the project our second day here. We got a whole team together....8 in total! A french nurse working at the hospital, the Haitian doctor, a french missionary, and 3 Haitian women working in the hospital. We worked for hours, completely drenched in sweat, covered from head to foot in dirt, but at the end of the first day we had made quite a dent in the room! We had emptied most boxes and unloaded their treasures onto shelves, organizing a wound supply shelf, a suture shelf, and a surgery shelf. There is still soooo much to be done!! We have barely sratched the surface, but we left that day exhausted and proud of the work we had accomplished. If we continue as a team to tackle the work, it should not be long before the hospital supplies will be ready!!