Here are the impressions of Debra Abraham, a longtime lecturer at Penn who regularly travels to Haiti to deliver patient care. She was in Haiti when the earthquake struck:

Five hours after arriving in Port Au Prince for what I thought would be my “routine” annual service trip to Hôpital Albert Schweitzer, located in rural Deschapelles approximately 70 kms north of Port Au Prince, the earthquake hit.

In 2002, the opportunity to teach CPR to the nursing staff at HAS came up via an email at the School of Nursing, at Penn.  I have been going once or twice a year since then to provide professional development education, nursing leadership training, and patient care in the hospital and its more rural clinics.  Having just completed a post master’s nurse practitioner program, in adult primary care, in December, I never realized my “first day on the job” would be doing triage after one of the worst natural disasters in history.  Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.

I was staying  with a friend, Zulta, a Haitian midwife, in her house when there was a loud explosive sound followed by escalating vibrations of the earth.  As things were falling off the walls, we grabbed her kids and ran outside.  The house behind ours was razed.  People were screaming, chanting, praying and looking towards the sky.  Of course we had no way of knowing what was happening until a few hours later when we turned on the car radio and listened to an international French radio station.  There were no local broadcasts yet and needless to say I never had access to CNN.  All communications were down and my first thoughts were for my family, especially my children, thinking I could be dead.

The next morning, a friend of Zulta’s who lived in Delmar, one of the hardest hit areas, came to the house asking for supplies to help her neighbors.  The friend’s house had been destroyed.  Zulta had some gauze, betadine, sutures, and ampicillin.  I had Motrin, granola bars and a few other things.  The town was totally devastated.  For the most part, the wounded were centrally located and we started doing what we could.  We were the first on site.  Once we started to treat, the word got out and parents were bringing their children and relatives to us.  The injuries were extensive-spinal cord injuries, compound fractures, amputations, a skull fracture and many lacerations and abrasions.  As you can imagine, most needed more than gauze and betadine.  People had splinted their own limbs with cardboard boxes or wood and dressed wounds with clothing.  I felt helpless in some respects but in retrospect I know we provided support and comfort to many.  

Less than 48 hours after the earthquake, we headed into Port Au Prince to see if we could locate and internet phone or similar.  We quickly realized that was not going to happen.  Dead bodies had already been lined up on the streets covered in sheets or plastic, for the most part.  The odor from the corpses was overwhelming.  Thousands of people were walking looking for a parcel of land on which to stake their claim; many carrying suitcases or mattresses.  I arrived in Deschapelles, two days after the earthquake, and the first thing I did was to call home from an internet phone at a local kiosk.

I spent the remaining 10 days at HAS working triage for a few days and then on the wards caring for hundreds of patients.  Normally an 85 bed hospital, the numbers swelled to 500 with patients arriving from Port Au Prince daily.  Needless to say, supplies were  quickly depleted and we ran out of pain medication and some basic supplies which were later replaced as surgical teams from Canada and the US arrived.  With mixed feelings, I returned home on January 25^th, via Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic.

I cannot express the respect I have for the endeavors at HAS and their ongoing need for funding .  If there is one thing I would like everyone to know…in spite of the horrible conditions of daily life, in the poorest country in the western hemisphere, I am constantly amazed by the grace, dignity, and resolve of the Haitian people even under such extreme adversity.