Letter from a Doctor in Haiti

by Te-Ping Chen · 2010-01-18 09:36:00 UTC
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As we've written before on the site, among relief organizations responding to the disaster in Haiti, Partners in Health is one of the best and most established in the mix, with 20 years' history of in-country partnerships. They were among the first responders to the quake, working in some cases fully 48 hours without sleep, fashioning splints out of license plates and tourniquets out of T-shirts. Now, with communications partially restored in Port-au-Prince, their work continues to expand.

In an email written yesterday morning to PiH staff in Boston, PiH doctor Evan Lyon brings a direct perspective on his work in Port-au-Prince:

...beyond the horror, one very striking reality is that things are totally peaceful...drove past the main central park in PAP [Port-au-Prince] where at least 50K people must be sleeping and it was almost silent.

people cooking, talking, some singing and crying.  people are kind, calm, generous to us and others.  even with hundreds lying on the ground, open fractures, massive injuries of all kinds.

there are few dead bodies on the street.  stench is everywhere.  the city is changed forever.

we had a late day opportunity to evacuate 4 patients to the US.  these may be the first haitian nationals allowed to leave for the US...the DR has taken many many more....

us citizens and haitian american citizens leaving by the hundreds on US planes.   and our small team of haitian and american docs evacuating a drop in the bucket... (more)

Partners in Health just airlifted nine critical-condition patients into Philadelphia and the Dominican Republic. They're keeping a blog and Twitter feed live with news on the ground, which you can follow here as they work to assist, in Dr. Lyon's words, the "beautiful, proud, and strong nation" of Haiti.

Photo Credit: United Nations Development Programme

Te-Ping Chen Te-Ping Chen is a freelance writer and U.S. Truman Scholar whose writing has appeared in the Nation Magazine, the South China Morning Post magazine, Le Soir, and Slate.com.
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