{"id":516355,"date":"2022-11-17T20:06:54","date_gmt":"2022-11-17T17:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/it-wasnt-long-before-we-were-flooded-with-cholera-patients\/"},"modified":"2022-11-17T20:06:54","modified_gmt":"2022-11-17T17:06:54","slug":"it-wasnt-long-before-we-were-flooded-with-cholera-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/it-wasnt-long-before-we-were-flooded-with-cholera-patients\/","title":{"rendered":"#\u201cIt wasn\u2019t long before we were flooded with cholera patients\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_85 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a34bdf2898b6\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a34bdf2898b6\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/it-wasnt-long-before-we-were-flooded-with-cholera-patients\/#%E2%80%9C%E2%80%9CIt_wasnt_long_before_we_were_flooded_with_cholera_patients%E2%80%9D%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;\u201cIt wasn\u2019t long before we were flooded with cholera patients\u201d&#8221;<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9C%E2%80%9CIt_wasnt_long_before_we_were_flooded_with_cholera_patients%E2%80%9D%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;\u201cIt wasn\u2019t long before we were flooded with cholera patients\u201d&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<div>\n                                                                        <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019m a registered nurse with a master\u2019s in public health, and I\u2019ve been working with MSF in Haiti on and off since 2008. From my perspective, things have never been quite as bad for the people of Haiti as they are right now.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the summer, we saw a major upswing in patients who had suffered violent trauma in our emergency rooms. Between June and mid-October, we had more than 2,148 reported cases. At one point during that time, we treated 80 people with gunshot wounds in the span of just 72 hours. Things got even more complicated in September because of a fuel shortage, and Haiti went into what they call \u201cpays lock,\u201d which means \u201clocked country.\u201d There were road blockages and protests, and circulation had almost come to a complete stop. If all that wasn\u2019t enough, we began receiving patients with cholera symptoms at the end of September. So far, we\u2019ve seen 6,185 cases in our treatment centres.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1241805\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1241805 lazyload\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/MSB128399_Medium.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"667\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">MSF radiology technicians performing an MRI on an outpatient<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In normal times, my role is to ensure that MSF\u2019s various medical projects in Haiti are running smoothly. My days are usually spent in the office behind a computer, visiting our projects, attending meetings or lending a hand in clinical settings if needed. But in September, due to safety concerns, I was often unable to leave my apartment and was forced to work from home. In the distance, I could sometimes hear protests on the streets and heavy gunfire. It was always far enough away that I never felt like my life was in danger, but I knew something terrible was h<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ening and many more people would need medical help.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019ve seen people wounded by stray bullets, and I\u2019ve seen patients whose wounds were infected because they couldn\u2019t access medical care im<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a>tely after being injured. MSF field coordinators try to ensure our projects can operate safely in violent areas. We have guards at the door, but they\u2019re unarmed. We don\u2019t believe in arming people, because more guns equal more problems.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We were able to identify the very first cholera case in the country when a young girl came in with severe diarrhea and vomiting. We were able to isolate her thanks to the COVID isolation tent we set up in the parking lot, and thankfully she survived. We found another case around the same time when a father brought his sick daughter to a different treatment centre and informed us his son was also sick at home. Both children tragically passed away. It wasn\u2019t long before we were flooded with cholera patients. As of October 26, we had 340 cholera beds across our five MSF sites\u2014all of which were over 100 per cent capacity. We still don\u2019t know how this new outbreak occurred, and we probably won\u2019t know for quite a while.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With cholera, physical separation is incredibly important, and you want to avoid cross-contamination inside a medical centre at all costs. The most effective way to kill cholera is with chlorine, so we have different concentrations of chlorinated water that we use to wash our hands, surfaces, the shoes we wear into the isolation tents and so on. The disease doesn\u2019t spread through respiratory droplets, but we wear masks because COVID is also still a concern.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1241806\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1241806 lazyload\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/MSB130403_Medium.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"667\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">This patient, suffering from head trauma, was taken to the MSF emergency centre in Turgeau, Haiti<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We\u2019re at least dealing with fewer violent trauma cases now than we were earlier this year, but a \u201cnormal\u201d amount of violence in Haiti is still pretty significant. It\u2019s a challenge to juggle it all, and I\u2019ve been trying to recruit and hire more international staff to come help. It\u2019s not always easy to find people with the right experience. I try not to work more than 12-hour days because I need to save my energy and avoid burning out, but it\u2019s tough when there\u2019s always more work to do and people\u2019s lives depend on it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many of the patients we treat are of poor socioeconomic status. They come from areas that are extremely densely populated, where the distance between houses is essentially non-existent. They\u2019re living in makeshift, improvised structures, often with corrugated metal for a roof. The country also has a major issue with trash collection, and sometimes the roads are literally impassable because of all the garbage. There\u2019s a lack of access to food and clean water, which leads to malnutrition. Cholera will attack the most vulnerable, so we see children who are already suffering from malnutrition, and then cholera just takes advantage of it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because of the fuel shortage, public transportation now costs three times what it did just a few months ago. Patients can\u2019t afford to get around, not to mention the violence they may face in trying to do so. So they\u2019re waiting longer before coming in, and many of the people we\u2019re seeing are already severely dehydrated by the time they make it to us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We treat cholera patients by rehydrating them using a specific IV solution called Ringer\u2019s lactate, which contains a mixture of sodium chloride, sodium lactate, potassium chloride and calcium chloride in water. The illness causes a depletion of sodium and, if left untreated, it\u2019s very easy to die from it. Sadly, we know the patients coming to us are just the tip of the iceberg. Transmission is likely happening in the community on a large scale, so we also have points set up outside churches, markets and other community gathering places where people can come to access oral rehydration salts. This solution, mixed with clean water, can help treat people who aren\u2019t yet severely dehydrated. Some of the people coming to these points don\u2019t even necessarily have cholera\u2014they\u2019re just desperate for clean water.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1241807\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" class=\"wp-image-1241807 size-full lazyload\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/MSB138890_Medium-e1668684302154.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"590\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">An MSF staff hygienist checks the availability of chlorinated water at the entrance of the tents<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Working and living in Haiti comes with significant risks, and there are a number of protocols in place to ensure we stay safe. We never drive ourselves anywhere, we have an early curfew and there\u2019s a radio room where every MSF employee is being tracked at all times. Aside from knowing I\u2019m making a concrete difference in people\u2019s lives, one of the best parts of this job is the strong friendships I\u2019ve formed with my colleagues, many of whom are Haitians themselves. We live in close quarters in apartment buildings that MSF rents for us, and we support each other through unimaginably difficult situations. We laugh and share, and we also talk about our tough days. In the intensity comes a camaraderie, and those relationships can be really strong and special.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Everyone develops their own coping mechanisms to unwind and take their mind off things, and my go-tos are cooking and baking. Focusing on a recipe helps keep my hands and mind busy, plus I get to share whatever I\u2019ve made with my colleagues and friends. Sharing food is one of the ways we bond\u2014plus my staff can\u2019t complain to me about work-related stuff if they\u2019re busy eating my cookies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Also, Haiti is in the Caribbean and it\u2019s absolutely beautiful. Sometimes, if I\u2019m high up enough and looking out at the ocean, I can trick my brain into momentarily forgetting about all the suffering going on down below. But then I remember all the people who so desperately need help, and I get right back to work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Right now, we\u2019re trying to open more beds and find new sites so we don\u2019t have to keep treating patients in isolation tents in parking lots. We\u2019re trying to go further out into the communities to reach the people who can\u2019t get to us. We\u2019re always trying to anticipate how many medical supplies we\u2019ll need\u2014things like IV fluids, for example. Recently we had to get a charter flight to deliver all the supplies we needed because we had no other way of getting them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019ll be here until April, so I\u2019m doing my best to preserve my energy as best I can. And I know that when I leave, I\u2019ll feel both relieved and guilty. Because I get to leave\u2014that\u2019s not the case for the people who live here and have to endure so much.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014As told to Mira Miller<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async defer crossorigin=\"anonymous\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News<\/a> articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/general\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/news\/world\/haiti-cholera-msf-port-au-prince\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;\u201cIt wasn\u2019t long before we were flooded with cholera patients\u201d&#8221; I\u2019m a registered nurse with a master\u2019s in public health, and I\u2019ve been working with MSF in Haiti on and off since 2008. From my perspective, things have never been quite as bad for the people of Haiti as they are right now.\u00a0 In the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":516356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/MSB139205_Medium-766x431.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[71086,136250],"class_list":["post-516355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-haiti","tag-msf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}