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Haiti one year on: a long journey to a healthy recovery

By Sarah Oughton
January 13, 2011 at 10:00 am

This is the fourth post in a week-long series about different aspects of the Red Cross’ work in Haiti.

Seeing a distraught baby wrapped head to toe in bandages and being comforted by a Red Cross doctor is something I will never forget.

I’ve worked in the aftermath of several disasters, but I’d never seen anything like the scenes of utter destruction that I found in Port-au-Prince, even though I didn’t visit till three months after the earthquake.

I went to Haiti to make a short video showing the impact of the quake and to give survivors a chance to tell their stories.

Although I got the opportunity to see aid being distributed, from food and household goods to tents and tarpaulins, as well as seeing vital water and sanitation facilities being built, it was visiting the Red Cross field hospital and clinics that had the biggest impact on me.

So many of the city’s health facilities and staff were affected by the quake and I can’t imagine how frightening it must have been for those with injuries needing urgent treatment in the first few days.

In the aftermath of the quake, Red Cross healthcare clinics were seeing an estimated 600 patients a day – about 2,800 a week. One year on, the Red Cross continues to provide vital primary and secondary healthcare services to the affected population and more than 216,900 people have been treated.

For all stakeholders – the affected population, the Haitian government, the UN, aid agencies – the sheer scale of needs and responding in this urban context remains a challenge. Normally after a major disaster you would expect to be able to draw on resources from the capital city.

But this is not the case and in addition it’s not only those in the capital who need help, as the earthquake also increased the burden of healthcare in many rural communities which people fled to when they lost their homes and livelihoods.

And this last year in Haiti the hits have not stopped coming with the hurricane season and flooding and then the cholera outbreak all exacerbating the situation.

Following a request from the Haitian government, the Red Cross set up cholera treatment centres, as well as an observation centre in La Piste camp in Port-au-Prince, home to 50,000 people.

Thousands of Red Cross hygiene promotion volunteers trained in cholera preparedness and prevention are going door-to-door across camps to make sure people know how to keep themselves and their families safe. And we’ve reached more than 2.5 million people by sending SMS messages about how they could limit their chances of becoming sick.

Health education is crucial to help people maintain their own health and the Red Cross uses its weekly radio programme, radio adverts, and sound trucks to spread cholera prevention and other health messages. We’ve also used innovative tactics, such as clowns, drama and music to get the message across.

We’ve basically integrated cholera treatment and prevention into every single area that we work in, an indication of the severity of the problem. But encouragingly, a doctor in La Piste thinks the hygiene promotion is really working as the admissions for treatment seem to be slowing down.

As the Haitian Ministry of Health strives to build basic health services and address ongoing and future challenges it is supported by the World Health Organisation and many national and international aid organisations including the Red Cross.

However, the challenge is not just about the struggle to cope with new vulnerable groups, such as more people with disabilities, there is also a huge psychological and social impact within the population resulting from loss of loved ones as well as the dislocation and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people who lost their homes, moved to new areas and lost contact with family members.

More than 100 Haitian Red Cross volunteers have been trained in basic

psychosocial support for children and adults.

At the field hospital, I got to see this work in action with children getting to sing, dance, paint and express their feelings and emotions in a safe environment. Seeing the resilience of these children and their smiling faces was the best thing I saw during my trip.

But the image of the baby being comforted by the doctor remains strong for me. I know that child, like thousands of others, faces a long, long road to recovery and, twelve months on, it is just the beginning of that journey.

Find out more about how we’re helping people recover

Images © Sarah Oughton/BRC

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Tags: cholera, disaster, earthquake, Haiti, haiti earthquake appeal, livelihoods, public health, recovery, recovery programme

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 13th, 2011 at 10:00 am and is filed under Emergencies, International. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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