York ER Nurse: Conditions in Haiti are Worse

Eyana Adah McMillan – The York Dispatch

Susan McDonald gave the girl a lollipop, expecting the child to savor the treat while waiting for a relative to be treated at the Haitian medical facility.

“She ate the wrapper. She ate the lollipop,” said McDonald of New Freedom. “Then she ate the stick. This isn’t hunger. It’s starvation. It’s horrendous.”

McDonald, an emergency room nurse at York Hospital, saw the 13-year-old girl every day while serving from June 15 to 22 at the medical facility in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where she helped provide medical treatment to the January earthquake victims.

The nurse said medical and living conditions have worsened for many Haitians since her first week-long volunteer time there in March.

“People who were mildly sick in March are sicker Haiti now,” McDonald said. “Those who were hungry in March, they’re starving to death now, literally. They seem to have been forgotten. People need to know the Haitians still need help.”

The nurse traveled with volunteers and officials from Ipswich, Mass-based Partners in Development, a nonprofit, nondenominational Christian organization that has been providing medical care as well as educational and economic development programs in Haiti since 1990.

This visit: While in Haiti in June, McDonald said she saw more cases of malaria, tuberculosis and typhoid fever than on her March trip. She said she also saw the heart-wrenching effects of children desperately fighting starvation.

“We saw dozens of children with cracked and broken teeth because they’re eating pebbles and rubble off the ground,” the nurse said. “And they’re putting mud between leaves and eating them like sandwiches.”

Children’s hair is changing colors — going from black to orange to yellow — and then completely falling out because of starvation.

McDonald said she helped treat two 2-year-old children who weighed just 18 pounds. One of the 18-pound children is the nephew of the 13-year-old girl, McDonald said.

The nurse said the girl, whom she met during the March trip, spends the day at the hospital to look after her nephew, whose parents died in the quake.

McDonald said she is now sponsoring the 2-year-old child through the program to make sure he gets the food, water, medical care and clothing he needs.

Living conditions: About 7,000 Haitians who have lost their jobs, homes and families because of the earthquake are now living in tarp tents on a pig farm near the medical facility, McDonald said.

“These tents are held up by sticks, and there’s no floor, just pig farm dirt and mud, so you can imagine how disease would spread,” she said.

Many of the Haitians who work at the medical facility also live at the pig farm, she said.

McDonald, who plans to return to Haiti next year, said when she was in Haiti in March, she could hear people singing hymns day and night. She heard no such singing in June.

“People are weary and they’re tired,” she said. “They’re just so hungry and sick. But they’re still very gentle, very courageous and kind people.”