habibti74
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I went to Haiti in September to work as a nurse (I'm an ER nurse in Central IL) and needless to say, well, there was no EMS system there. The clinic I worked at had an "ambulance" that was a guy pushing a wheelbarrow and making ambulance noises.
The hospital had no air conditioning (it was averaging 108 degrees down there) and you had to pay before they let you in, you got expired medications (if they had any) and any food/water you wanted, your family would have to bring you.
We had a surgeon on our team who did some surgeries down there, using a battery operated pulse ox, no intubation and the OR wasn't air-conditioned either.
The clinic I worked at saw 2218 patients in 8 days. People waited 2-3 days to see the doctors and no one fought, complained about the wait, and most of the time, they were too ill for us to do anything for anyway. We didn't have a lot of drugs to hand out, no lab tests, no x-rays - we gave albuterol, tylenol, some hypertension medicines, some diabetes medicines, we did what we could but of course it probably wasn't enough. We saw tons of scabies, malaria, osteomyelitis, burns, worms, and ortho stuff.
One of the most common EMS problems was motorcycle accidents. None of the roads had street signs, speed limits, traffic lights, lane markers and people were all over the place. So yeah, lots of traffic accidents in their high speed motorcycles.
Made me thankful to come home and even more frustrated to see people complaining about the 1 hour waits for the chronic back pain! I have photos from the clinic - PM me if you want to see!
The hospital had no air conditioning (it was averaging 108 degrees down there) and you had to pay before they let you in, you got expired medications (if they had any) and any food/water you wanted, your family would have to bring you.
We had a surgeon on our team who did some surgeries down there, using a battery operated pulse ox, no intubation and the OR wasn't air-conditioned either.
The clinic I worked at saw 2218 patients in 8 days. People waited 2-3 days to see the doctors and no one fought, complained about the wait, and most of the time, they were too ill for us to do anything for anyway. We didn't have a lot of drugs to hand out, no lab tests, no x-rays - we gave albuterol, tylenol, some hypertension medicines, some diabetes medicines, we did what we could but of course it probably wasn't enough. We saw tons of scabies, malaria, osteomyelitis, burns, worms, and ortho stuff.
One of the most common EMS problems was motorcycle accidents. None of the roads had street signs, speed limits, traffic lights, lane markers and people were all over the place. So yeah, lots of traffic accidents in their high speed motorcycles.
Made me thankful to come home and even more frustrated to see people complaining about the 1 hour waits for the chronic back pain! I have photos from the clinic - PM me if you want to see!
I'm a Muslim girl, wear a headscarf all the time, even when working in the ER or on the back of the ambulance. I get comments on it all the time. 
