By Karen Middleton karen@athensnews-courier.com

— Nearly five months later, the masonry roof of a destroyed building rests on debris a few feet off the ground and from inside the ruins emanates the unmistakable stench of a rotting body.

Certified Nurse Midwife Roberta Ress of Athens, who just returned from Pernier, Haiti, where she went with a medical team to lend aid, said this week that conditions there remain essentially the same as the day after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck on Jan. 12.

The Haitian government estimates that 230,000 people died, 300,000 were injured and 1 million were left homeless in the catastrophic quake. Keeping the living alive is more important than recovering the dead.

Ress said it distresses her that the plight of the Haitian people is no longer headline news when the needs remain so dire.

“It is devastation, chaos –– just overwhelming,” she said. “I often said when I was there that I would cry if I had time. These people have been forgotten.”

Ress was one of a seven-member Pro-Vision out of Knoxville comprised of Dr. Eric Kerly, internist; Mark Jackson, pharmacist; Sonia McGrath, registered nurse; Sherrie Rhoades, nurse practitioner; Al Farrar, operating room technician, and Earla Williams, RN.

Transportation was provided by Regions Bank, which has made a commitment to fly seven aid workers down and seven back every week for a full year.

Weeks before the trip, Ress collected donations of unneeded sickroom supplies from the public and the OR, Mother-Baby Unit and Emergency Room of Athens-Limestone Hospital.

“I thought we would be treating minor things, but these are some very sick people,” said Ress. “Most people came accompanied by just one parent because the other parent had been killed.”

Ress tells of one particularly heartbreaking case in which a 13-year-old girl reported to the clinic to be treated for a sexually transmitted disease. Her mother was dead, and at 5-foot, 2 inches, the adolescent girl weighed just 60 pounds. She had been raped by her 24-year-old uncle and his friend.

“There is no one charged with domestic or sexual abuse in Haiti,” said Ress.

“Violating women and girls in Haiti is not a crime –– there are no laws against it.”

Ress said she was haunted by the girl, who when she came for treatment uttered repeatedly, “I’m hungry.” She said she couldn’t sleep at night until she found relief for the child.

“What will I do about this little girl?” I thought. “I learned of this orphanage that would take her if the parents signed over their rights. Finally, the father and grandfather agreed to let her go.”

Ress said one 42-year-old woman came to the clinic, saying she was in labor. The woman had a protruding abdomen, but Ress could find no fetal heart tones.

The clinic was not equipped to deliver her of her dead infant, so Ress loaded her into a taxi and they tried to find a hospital. After being turned away by four hospitals –– one of which whose doctor said they could not “waste a surgery on a dead baby” –– they finally arrived at the Doctors Without Borders Hospital in the worst slum.

“They performed an ultrasound and discovered she wasn’t pregnant –– it was a tumor,” Ress said. “But she got up and left anyway. Eventually, that tumor will have to come out. She will hemorrhage and die.”

At the Doctors Without Borders Hospital, women in labor lay on tables in cubicles. 

“No one got an exam,” she said. “If they walked by and saw the baby coming, they took her back. One woman sat on the floor in a pool of blood. She had already delivered and no one was paying attention to her –– they just stepped over her as they went about their business.

“I don’t get overwhelmed easily, but I couldn’t believe what I saw. I reached down and massaged her uterus, which usually stops the bleeding.”

Ress said when she looked up from that patient, she saw that one of the other women was about to deliver.

“I grabbed some gloves and caught that baby,” she said. “I called for a cord clamp, but they had no cord clamps that we have been using for years. They still used umbilical cord tape. I cut the cord, dried the baby and gave it to its mother. 

“They had old-fashioned heat lamps hanging from the ceiling and they would line the babies up below the lamps. I don’t know how they knew which baby belonged to whom.

Then, lo and behold, another baby was coming and I had to wash my hands in what was surely dirty water, but it was all they had. It was so hot in there we were all dripping.”

Needless to say there was no air-conditioning, but there was no refrigeration and little clean water to be found, Ress said. 

“There was no milk and no refrigeration,” she said. “Each day was spent looking for food and water because there was no way to keep it over.”

Sherrie Roades, one of those on the Pro-Vision team, said of her experience:

“So many people say, ‘Thank you for going,’ but I always feel I got more out of it than I gave. Maybe people can’t go, but they can continue to give, especially medicines, medical supplies and money that can be delivered personally to a local church or clinic in Pernier, Haiti.”
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COMMENT: HAITIAN-TRUTH.ORG
Unfortunately, this lady speaks the truth.

Haiti remains much as it was immediately after the January 12 earthquake.

There was a momentary spurt of frenzied support as the world endeavored to pour a gallon jug theough a needle’s eye.

President Rene Preval, and his criminal associates, saw the inflow of aid as a quick way to add fortunes to their already overloaded bank accounts. Preval is personally responsible, along with senior members of Haiti’s Central Bank, for the theft of some $198,000,000 Petro-Cariabe funding dedicated to the earlier hurricane disaster of 2008.  Each effort to learn the truth has been deflected.

Ex-Prime Minister Pierre Louis promised to reveal details but never did so. Money obtains silence and one mustr remember she has been Preval’s friend and associate for more than 40 years. They were once partners in a failed bakery.

Now Preval  moved to take total control of all  quake relief supplies even as the American government promised to not let him have a penny of their relief funding.  Now, the international community has effectively given Preval control of all funds flowing into Haiti.

The Haitian victims have been totally overlooked in the rush to make money.

Everyone has a big project that will require millions.  The fact that these will not reach fruition after the funds are released – doesn’t seem to matter. Only the initial reports are watched. There is no follow-up.

Haiti and its restoration projects needs an oversight body to follow the funds from the donor to the project…to ensure proper use of these billions.  It is already too later to have a proper accounting for the first billions, they are gone like a glass of water into arid desert sand.