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Happening ... in the Local Church
By Kevin Cullen
The
Catholic Moment
LAFAYETTE — Imagine, if you can, the ground covered with severely injured earthquake victims. Some have crushed arms and legs that must be cut off; others have broken bones. Many have deep infected cuts after being hit by falling glass, lumber and concrete.
People are screaming and moaning. Family members are frantic. Exhausted physicians and surgeons must act quickly to save who they can as their stockpiles of pain killers and bandages dwindle.
Welcome to Haiti.
“It
was horrendous. I had worked in Haiti before, but this was nothing like
that,” said Dr. Rita Mankus, a parishioner at St. Lawrence Church in
Lafayette, who recently returned after an eight-day medical mission to the
Caribbean nation.
Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Eighty percent of its 9 million people live below the poverty line, and two-thirds of the labor force does not have formal jobs. Many of the estimated 150,000 quake deaths have been attributed to poor construction materials and practices.
Mankus, a kidney specialist, worked with doctors from several other nations who flew in to help as much as they could.
“I still feel God was with us the whole time,” she said. “I never felt unsafe. No one was there for their own glorification. I was very encouraged by the human spirit.”
Mankus had made two earlier medical trips to Haiti with groups from St. Patrick Church in Kokomo. This time, she was part of a medical team composed of surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses and a nurse practitioner. She and four others flew to Haiti from Fort Pierce, Fla., on Jan. 21. They took medical supplies, bottled water, oranges and other food with them.
The quake hit on Jan. 12. The team knew that amputations and deaths would be unavoidable if cuts and broken bones weren’t treated soon.
In the capital, Port-au-Prince, “one building would be up, and next to it would be another, totally collapsed,” Mankus said. “People were afraid to stay in their homes, so they were living in soccer fields, with blankets as tents.”
Mankus and the nurse practitioner first worked in St. Nicolas Hospital in Saint-Marc, about 35 miles away. About 300 quake victims, many of them moaning in pain, waited for treatment. Meanwhile, at the local morgue, “they were just stacking bodies,” she said.
Her first priority was helping patients who were still lying on the doors they had been carried in on, eight days before. There were no beds or stretchers. Bed sores, flies, noise and misery were all around.
“Legs and arms were dying, and required amputation. Haitians were criticizing the American doctors, saying we wanted to cut legs off, but that is all that could be done … pus was coming out,” Mankus said. “The radio station was saying, ‘Don’t go to Saint-Marc. They will cut your legs off.’”
She said that she and others did the best they could. The pharmacy required cash payments; hospital administration was deficient, supplies were few and sanitation was poor.
She then moved on to the town of Petit Riviere. Many of the wounds she saw there had not received fresh dressings since the quake. She applied antibiotics, removed sutures, closed wounds, administered painkillers and worked to get the worst open fractures to orthopedic surgeons and surgeons performing amputations.
“There were not enough nurses or doctors so we had to clean things up ourselves,” Mankus aid. “Surgeons were scrubbing blood off the floors … Every building was by itself,” with no communication system to link them.
She said the situation reminded her of a famous scene from the movie “Gone with the Wind.” The Battle of Atlanta is over, and the railroad yard is covered with dead, dying and wounded Confederate soldiers.
The supply of medications and supplies were a constant worry. To conserve sealed, sterile dressings, common gauze and other substitutes were used.
Most of the wounds she saw were caused by people being hit and crushed by heavy objects: broken bones, deep gashes, head injuries, lots of infection.
“I remember one girl. The top of her index finger was gone, down to the bone. There was not enough skin to close it up,” Mankus said.
Another girl, with half her leg ripped open, had walked through dirty water.
“I tried my best to tell them, ‘You have to change (dressings) or you will lose your leg,’” she said.
Days sometimes began at 7 a.m. and didn’t end until 9 p.m. She worked with other doctors from Haiti, the United States, Belgium, France and other nations. The stress was tremendous.
“Some (volunteers) said, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’” she said. “I broke down and cried at Saint-Marc, with all those people yelling and wailing. Families didn’t want amputation (to be performed), but you knew they would die otherwise. It was a heart-wrenching thing.”
The scenes in Port-au-Prince were unforgettable. The president’s palace “has collapsed on top of itself; one whole wing of the huge cathedral … building after building, gone,” she said. “Some still had bodies inside, decomposing.
“I feel so bad for the people. The ones who got appropriate care we think will do OK, but we just don’t know, as weeks go on, how (others) will do without treatment.”
Mankus returned Jan. 29. She said she is glad she made the trip, and she may return.
“There was some healing going on,” she said. “We were all there to help the Haitians. I was really encouraged by so many people wanting to help their fellow man. Some of them had never been on a mission trip before.”