Worry

After the earthquake stroke in January, MSF moved into Port au Prince soon and started emergency intervention. Around the place I am working, we started doing operations under the trees. And the Haitian asked us to move into a deserted school to start up a hospital which is the one I am now working. We have our patients put under different tents that serve as our wards. Together we have 70 beds for that, we have another 65 beds for rehabilitation in a nearby area. We built an aseptic operation theatre out of some containers with air-conditioning which is a must for a standard orthopaedic operation, and we use another room in the school as another operation theatre where I usually work, mainly for wound dressing of open wounds, burn dressing and skin grafting, adjustment and removal of external fixator for broken bone. Of course there we see also our new emergency cases. There’s one thing I always worry about. If a hurricane come how can we protect our patients under these tents and even the container might be blown away, but of course our field coordinator has think of all these different situations, like we may displace our patients to the storehouse till the storm is over but for the container and the tents, we can only wish for the best. Seeing all these suffering people in real life while I am in the field, make me feel real sorry for their suffering, the unfairness between these people and those in developed area like us, the wide gap in living standard which include education and basic access to health facilities and of course even nutrition. One can sit back and keep on enjoying our luxurious life and keep a blind eye to all these people in our same planet or we can try our best and stretch out our helping hands. What would you choose?