News
Haiti hospital patients dying due to delays in medical supplies
20 January 2010
Five flights carrying 85 tonnes of medical supplies for medical
charity Médecins Sans Frontières
(MSF) have been turned away from Port au Prince airport since 14
January.
Loris de Filippi, emergency coordinator for the MSF’s Choscal Hospital
in Cite Soleil, said that five patients had died due to the lack of
medical supplies that should have been delivered in the planes.
“I have never seen anything like this. Any time I leave the operating
theatre I see lots of people desperately asking to be taken for surgery.
Today, there are 12 people who need life-saving amputations at Choscal
Hospital. We were forced to buy a saw in the market to continue
amputations. We are running against time here,” he said.
Morphine supplies have run out at Choscal Hospital. “It is like working
in a war situation,” said Rosa Crestani, MSF medical coordinator for
Choscal Hospital. “We don’t have any more morphine to manage pain for
our patients. We cannot accept that planes carrying life-saving medical
supplies and equipment continue to be turned away while our patients
die. Priority must be given to medical supplies entering the country.”
MSF has successfully landed five planes with a total of 135 tons of
supplies into Port-au-Prince. It says that another 195 tons of supplies
will need to be granted permission to land in the airport in the coming
days in order to continue MSF’s scale up of its medical relief operation
in Haiti.
More than 700 MSF staff are working to provide emergency medical care
to earthquake survivors in and around Port-au-Prince. MSF teams are
currently working in Choscal Hospital, Martissant Health Center, Trinite
Hospital, Carrefour hospital, Jacmel Hospital, and are establishing a
100-bed inflatable hospital in the Delmas area.
Part of the hospital was on a cargo plane diverted to the Dominican
Republic on Saturday. It was then transported by road, but two trucks
broke down on route, causing further delays in setting up the hospital.
A second plane with part of the hospital was able to land.
Unloading boxes for MSF's inflatable hospital on
site in a football field in
Port-au-Prince on Monday, Jan 18th 2010. Photo by Julie Remy/MSF
The main route from the Dominican Republic to Port au Prince is
heavily congested due to the large amounts of aid being routed through
the country's ports. By 18 January, 18,000 gallons of fuel a day were
being sent by road to keep transport operating in Haiti. However, there
are shortages of all types of vehicles, while the US is supplying the
majority of helicopters.
After-shocks continue to be a daily hazard. A 6.1 magnitude
earthquake was recorded at 6am (local time) today, according to the US
Geological Survey, with the epicentre 35 miles WSW of Port au Prince.
The first earthquake on 12 January was magnitude 7, centred in the
same area, 15 miles WSW of Port au Prince (see below).
Source: US Geological Survey Department of the
Interior/USGS
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has
produced a map of the intensity of damage from the earthquake (see
below).
Source: OCHA.
Detailed maps analysing the earthquake produced by the UN and other
agencies can be viewed on the ReliefWeb website:
www.reliefweb.int
|