From Dr. Frank McGeorge: It’s been days since I’ve been able to get a message out easily due to limited e-mail after the earthquake.
My focus was on providing medical care and I have many observations about that but I’ll start even more basically.
Water was huge problem. There was no running, safely drinkable water in city because pumping stations were out. Speaking to doctor’s in Haiti, the water supply was never really clean, now it’s simply absent. Unless you have access to a well, you quickly dehydrate in the heat and humidity.
Many of the kids I treated had diarrhea. I was told by a pediatrician that this was not really uncommon, but in a setting of these supply shortages it will be a serious problem. We spent some time teaching orphans how to prefilter and purify their water, hopefully it helps.
On the medical side, there are two obvious categories – the acute and the chronic. The acute are what you’d expect: crush injuries, fractures, sprains, lacerations.
The chronic was just as remarkable in the improvishered section Port Au Prince I set up my ER-clinic. Most of these people can’t afford medical care so my arrival was quickly welcomed; patients came in with gout, earaches, chronic migraines, asthma, high blood pressure, vaginitis, gonorrhea, ingrown toenails, and even a 2-month-old with history of meconium aspiration who probably had bronchiolitis. Basic medical care for these people has always been lacking, and I did not have the proper medicine and equipment to treat many of these conditions.
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