Blogs & Stories

The alarming situation in the care homes is a key factor why MSF team has connected with some elderly homes help them build preparedness to face any possible outbreaks in the future. They all did their best with the resources they had though, and they truly deserve to be acknowledged.

I have seen the despair, the lack of hope, the confusion, the inability to comprehend how they have ended up in this situation: losing family members and friends, losing their homes, losing the future they had envisioned for themselves. I have seen the constant fear experienced by so many, and how some people collapse in terror when the sound of airstrikes fills the air.

The hospital director and many of the interns were there and they were insistent: “You NEED to get them out of here. They need to survive. This is our hope”.

When I ran from triage to the red zone with our first emergency patient to put them onto the resuscitation bed, the nurse working there immediately started checking “ABCDE”. The nurse squeezed the Ambu bag and gently inflated the baby’s lungs. One, two, three, four, five.

Xavier Kernizan is an orthopedic surgeon who normally works at MSF's Tabarre hospital in Port-au-Prince. Since the 14 August earthquake, he has been working with an MSF surgical team in Jérémie.