Nine memorable days in Haiti, an adventure in medical care that won’t soon be forgotten.
Dr. Mark Wahba, a graduate of Estevan Comprehensive School and the University of Saskatchewan’s medical program, the son of Dr. Yosri Wahba (deceased) who practised as a general surgeon in Estevan for years, along with his nurse-wife Tracey and 26 other medical professionals from Saskatoon, made a big difference in the poverty-and earth-quake-ravaged country in mid-March.
They went to not only serve but also to deliver some vital supplies. They were there to teach, and, as it turned out, also to learn a few lessons about resiliency and determination.
Each member of the 28-person team was allowed to take one personal duffel bag plus one more 50 pound bag filled with medical supplies and equipment. The group flew out of Saskatoon to Las Vegas, where they boarded another plane to Miami, and then over to Haiti, arriving on the evening of March 11.
“You know, I was even a little nervous going into my first night shift,” said Wahba, who takes regular shifts as an emergency room physician in Saskatoon’s hospitals. He did similar work earlier in his career in Regina.
“We brought orthopedic supplies, dressings, sutures, crutches, orthopedic boots, catheters, gloves, masks, medications, antibiotics, generally the basics for our work,” he said.
The Saskatoon team was one of the largest, if not the largest, team to make their presence felt under the Broken Earth banner. Broken Earth is a charitable team consisting of medical professionals from across Canada who are focused on helping Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, recover from a devastating 2010 earthquake that left them even more impoverished and vulnerable than ever before.
“I believe a team from Barrie, Ontario, is going in next. Broken Earth would like to send one medical team in every month, if they could. I believe I would go again, but around her there are actually others who would like to go next. But I definitely would do it again.”
The medical team received no coddling. They lived dormitory style at the Bernard Mevs Hospital compound, four to a room, eating breakfast and lunch around a table and straight-back chairs in a common room. But the food was great and the evening meals, when they had a chance, were sometimes taken in the nearby United Nations station that resembled a military-style compound, he explained. They also got out to a small hotel one night for a quick meal.
Wahba soon discovered the emergency room work in Haiti was not unlike the job in Saskatoon, perhaps a little less frenzied, but still challenging, since many of the patients who showed up were suffering from late-stage illnesses or conditions.
“There were general trauma situations like we see here in Saskatoon. No real ambulances, so the patients are delivered in the back of half-ton trucks or cars.”
The care team was sensitive to the fact that patients and their families were responsible for covering the costs of medical services, so there were no “just in case,” tests ordered and the team learned new efficiencies that Wahba said he felt they could implement back on the home front, too.
“The whole hospital compound was no more than a half-city block. The ER was small, maybe 20’ x 30’ and we had a 10-foot alleyway to cross to get from ER to the operating room,” he said. “The surgery team made the biggest impact, they performed 40 surgeries in four days,” he said, commenting on the team of four orthopedic surgeons, one general surgeon, one plastic surgeon and one resident surgeon. One of their first jobs was to correct a challenging pelvic fracture on a patient who had been waiting a few days for their arrival.
“The local doctors are very well-educated, but the equipment is basic, and they might have only one piece and some of it is quite old, so some new techniques we can use are new to them. We taught them and they taught us.” Medical students were brought in to work with the doctors and nurses using direct point-of-care ultrasound readings and the hospital had a CT scanner, but it was housed in a semi-trailer parked on the hospital compound.
“I’m sure they were grateful for the equipment and materials we were able to leave behind,” said Wahba. “But yes, in introspection, we learned a lot and had a few take aways we could bring home. There is poverty, but the population overall is happy, and I was impressed at how clean they were. Here is their country with rubble and garbage in the street, yet the people were clean. I don’t know how they did that,” he said, providing just one example of the impression he gained over the course of the nine days.
There was one quick tour of Port-au-Prince and a museum visit. There was another half-day when the team split up to either go swimming or visit an orphanage.
They paid a visit to the hospital’s prosthetic limb laboratory, which is badly needed since so many people lost limbs in the earthquake, including the artificial limb technician himself who had once been a welder. Another group of resourceful people, made partially disabled by the disaster, turned their attention to sewing machines in Project Stitch, to make school uniforms, bags, and aprons on contracts with schools and retailers.
Another thing he learned, he said with a laugh, “My wife and I discovered we could work together quite well. We really hadn’t done a lot of work together in Saskatoon or Regina, but we got to work together in Haiti.”
A sense of collegiality quickly arose among the team members, something Wahba said he hadn’t experienced since his residency days as a student. As medical professionals they are always intent on working in a team-like atmosphere, but in Haiti, it was brought to a new level of sensitivity. “It reminded me of those student days, the fun days you might even say, as we were all learning. We worked together and we worked hard, and yes, it was fun,” he said, even under those extreme circumstances.
They probably made a big difference, too, but that remains unsaid by the team members. Those they helped, however, might want to say something about that, based on the smiles that were emitted as one patient after another, received a little relief from pain and suffering at the skilled hands of Saskatchewan medical professionals with compassion.
