The Cathoholic

Hopital Sacre Coeur Update: Cardinal O'Malley Visits!

Here is an update from Peter Kelley, MD, the president of the Crudem Foundation www.crudem.org, which supports Hopital Sacre Coeur in Milot, Haiti. According to Dr.Kelley, there was much excitement at the hospital and in the town with the arrival of Cardinal O'Malley, the first cardinal ever to visit the area.

Dr. Kelley sent the following report

                                        ONE THOUSAND VOLUNTEERS

   I just returned from Haiti and again was amazed at the many changes since my last visit one month ago. We were  blessed to have over 70 volunteers on site which made me check to see our total number since the earthquake. I was surprised to see that as of yesterday we have had 955 volunteers since the earthquake. By the end of April it will be well over 1000! What a great testimony to the Christian spirit that is alive and well in the US.

  We now have 162 patients from the earthquake and 81 patients from our area in northern Haiti. There are 40 patients that are anxiously awaiting discharge this week which will leave us with a total of 203 inpatients. When patients are ready for discharge we give them the option of settling in our area or returning to Port au Prince. The majority choose to return to Port au Prince where their families are located. We give them food, money and a tent when we discharge them and provide transportation by bus to Port au Prince.

  As we discharge patients we are using the tents for different purposes. The first tent has now become the outpatient clinic with 8 exam rooms and a triage area. A canopy was built between the wall and the tent to create a waiting area for the 200+ outpatients that are seen every day. The second tent is used for post op patients which has allowed us to clear the hallways of the hospital of patients and increase the space for our inpatient medical and maternity patients. Our hospital has returned to a unified staff of Haitians and volunteers working side by side.

   During my stay we were blessed to welcome Cardinal O'Malley to Crudem/Hopital Sacre Coeur. He arrived by helicopter from Port au Prince with the Papal Nuncio and Jim O'Connor KMKob and Roger Jean Charles MDKM. There was a great celebration since it was the first time a Cardinal had ever come to the area. He visited with the patients and volunteers and was visibly moved by the spirit of the children with amputations. He said Mass in front of the tents so all the patients could participate. There are some great pictures and a video of the visit on the Cardinal's blog: www.cardinalseansblog.org .

  As we move forward the number of our volunteers will decrease to 30 to 40 a week over the next 2 weeks and we have need for primary care physicians for late May and through the summer. Our specialty surgical  teams have returned because the ORs are no longer needed on a regular basis for orthopedic surgery. The first team to return was the Urology team led by Dale Peterson. They saw over 120 patients in their clinic the first day and have 2 weeks full of surgery scheduled. In early May we will have a general surgery and ENT team arrive. I return the end of May with an Ophthalmology team and a plastic surgery team arrives in June.

  We are proceeding with our renovation and expansion plans. Tim Traynor has returned and is guiding the many projects. The prosthetic lab outfitted with a donation from the American Association of Malta and Malteser will arrive next week and the donated new 6000 ft storage building called a sprung building will arrive in May. When the storage building is assembled we will move all of our supplies to that building and will institute a bar code system so we can track our supplies and our needs thanks to a donation from the Federal Association of the Order of Malta.

  I have received inquires about the financial status of our hospital since an article appeared on MSNBC and the Miami Herald describing the closing of a hospital in Port au Prince called Hopital Sacre Coeur/CDTI. This hospital was owned by a Haitian radiologist who tried to expand with the help of a NGO to help the earthquake victims. Apparently the NGO was unable to continue it's financial support and the hospital was forced to close.

  We are blessed with support from the 3 US associations of the Order of Malta and their many individual knights and dames as well as many other individual donors. In fact over 95% of our financial support comes from individual donors. We have been in existence for 24 years thanks to this support and plan to continue  providing care for at least another 24 years. We are proud that we are probably the only non government hospital in Haiti that is run by an all Haitian administration and staff. We feel that Hopital Sacre Coeur is the perfect prototype for how medical care can be delivered in Haiti and are hopeful that it will be used as an example  in the rebuilding effort. Thank you for making all of this possible and for your continued support of Crudem/Hopital Sacre Coeur.

 

        Peter Kelly MD

        President, Crudem Foundation Inc. 

        www.crudem.org

Hopital Sacre Coeur: Update from Milot

Here's a recent update on activities at Hopital Sacre Coeur in Milot, Haiti. The hospital has engineered an incredible transformation: from a 74-bed facility to up to 400 beds. The shift has been backed by a surge in U.S. volunteers--physicians, nurses, physical therapists, and other medical personnel--who are working with the hospital's Haitian staff to  help amputees gain independence. The need for medical  volunteers will remain strong for the foreseeable future. Any physicians, nurses, or physical therapists who can take off a week of work to participate on a mission to MIlot are welcome to contact the Crudem Foundation  www.crudem.org, which supports the hospital and is organizing the missions.  If you want to read about the first medical team to arrive at Hopital Sacre Coeru in the wake of the earthquake, here's my story in the National Catholic Register.

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Greetings from Milot.

It's the wettest trip I've ever had. Daily showers & all night rains. It has kept the temperatures cool but has challenged the many volunteers living in tents. We currently have 50 volunteers here. Our normal numbers, pre-earthquake are usually 12-15, so it's an interesting dynamic.

 I just can't believe the energy, compassion and commitment of these volunteers. Their stories of how they came to choose CRUDEM are simply incredible. Each night I learn something new about each volunteer. The human spirit is amazing & it energizes all of us to hear their stories.

Each night we have a meeting to discuss the necessary items that need to be communicated to all of the staff. At the conclusion of our meeting I ask the team leaders to share the compelling stories of the day. These teams include, Pediatrics, Physical Therapy, ICU,  Physicians, Orthopedic Surgery & Nursing.Yesterday was an amazing day, so the stories shared were simply inspiring.

Yesterday morning I received a call from an aid agency near Port au Prince asking about a particular patient. His name was Felix. They mentioned that his wife had inquired about her husband & they suggested that he might have been transferred here after the earthquake. After certifying the patient log & then radioing the nurses working in that particular tent, we were able to confirm his presence. When the nurse went to the tent to inform him that his wife was trying to locate him, the entire tent of patients erupted in cheers, you see Felix had thought his wife had died in the earthquake. He was stunned for a moment & then just wept in gratitude. His fellow patients began to alternately comfort & congratulate him.

We have a young girl who is a double amputee. She is a beautiful girl, but has been extremely depressed & the staff has been so worried about her. Her mother who was thought to have died in Port au Prince arrived yesterday to be reunited with her daughter.

What a joy for the doctors & nurses to witness after caring for this girl. This morning she was laughing & singing & exhibiting a new found joy for living.

Yesterday was a good day.

Today I can only pray will be even better.

As always, thank you for your prayers, support & pass along the news about us.

regards,

Charles Dubuque

CRUDEM Foundation Board Member

 www.crudem.org

Haiti: Missionaries of Charity, Jesuit Refugee Services

Ever since I left Haiti--three days before the January 12th earthquake leveled most of Port-au-Prince--it has rarely been out of my thoughts. Meanwhile, the Haitian people, and a vast number of foreign governemnts, NGOs, and Catholic church groups have engaged in a vast struggle to address the immediate needs of food, shelter and medical care, while also plotting a future course for the Western hemisphere's most impoverished nation. There has been a good deal of debate regarding the best path forward--from resettling more than a million homeless Haitians out of the capital, which still lies mostly in rubble, to rebuilding essential social and economic institutions. Religious orders in Haiti are playing a vital role in  shaping both the short-term and long-term strategy. Here's my up-date in the National Catholic Register that provides a glimpse of life on the ground in Haiti. The scenes and stories are heart-breaking and inspiring. It didn't get in the story, but one priest who is featured in the article said that the Haitian people, who have nothing and thus have never learned to become attachment to material possessions inspire him with their joy and hope. That priest needed some inspiration: everything he had worked to build, over two decades, for the people of a poor and dangerous slum is now in rubble.

Haiti Earthquake--A Desperate Struggle at Hopital Sacre Coeur

During my week serving on a medical mission at Hopital Sacre Coeur in Milot, Haiti, I was inspired by the hard work, compassion and dedication of the Haitian and American physicians and nurses I got to know. And that was before the earthquake. Here's my story in the National Catholic Register about the first medical team to arrive at the hospital after the earthquake. As I report in this story, this small band of medical volunteers, with assistance from the hospital's Haitian staff, struggled mightily to meet the needs of a flood of earthquake victims, airlifted by helicopter from Port au Prince. The 74- bed facility is now serving 400 patients, with the assistance of a 90-member team of volunteers. This piece didn't talk about what local Haitians living near the hospital are doing to assist the earthquake victims. In fact, they have opened up their home--simple cinder block structures that would fit in many American living rooms, and taken in the relatives of patients who have no where to stay. Locals have also visited patients who don't have family members in the area, feeding, caringn for them and praying with them.