FEB 25: "THE EMERGENCY IS NOT OVER", DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS ON THE URGENT NEED FOR POST-OP CARE, PHYSICAL THERAPY, PROSTHESIS AND COUNSELING

Excerpt from a report by Doctors Without Borders/Medicins sans Frontieres

Haiti: The Thinking Behind The Hard Choices

Surgeon Angeleke Saridakis discussing the care needed by the over 100,000 amputees in Haiti:

The need for care does not end once the limb is removed, however. Rather, a new and equally crucial phase begins, one that involves after-care specialists, physiotherapists, mental health counselors, reconstructive surgeons and others who can help the patient learn to adapt to their situation—learn, in essence, to live and move again. This is a particular concern at present, as some emergency medical organizations, believing the acute phase to the emergency to be complete, have begun to leave Haiti.

“We’re starting to need, and I mean really need, things like crutches and physiotherapy,” Saridakis said. “Caregivers must provide health care with a special focus on mobilizing people and returning them to a minimally debilitated state.”

MSF has already opened four sites specifically dedicated to post-operative care, and a fifth will open soon. Teams have been working with the independent non-profit organization Handicap International on physiotherapy and rehabilitation programs in several facilities. MSF has also expanded its mental health activities in its various locations and through outreach programs, offering psychological counseling to the injured, the maimed, the homeless, the grieving, and the bereft. Though there are signs that some measure of normalcy has returned to Haiti, there is still, quite clearly, a great deal of work to be done.

“A lot of people are saying that the emergency is over, and I take issue with that,” Saridakis said. “I think it is not over. The emergency is going to be ongoing for months.”

For doctors and amputees alike, many challenges await, she adds, particularly given the ongoing struggle to find decent living conditions for Haitians who lost their homes and now reside in hastily-erected, poorly-served, thoroughly unsanitary camps. 

“I contend that until every patient has a prosthesis, and enough physical therapy and mental health counseling that their quality of life is maximized and their disability is minimized—that they’re taught how to live with this disability—until that point, the emergency, in my eyes, is not over,” she said.