By Darragh Worland | Wednesday, February 10, 2010 12:33 PM ET

A staff member with Doctors Without Borders offers an insider’s view of the organization’s medical relief work in Haiti and how your thoughts and prayers are helping those in need.

In the days and weeks after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, beyond donating money, many of us felt helpless. What was most needed, of course, were doctors to help the wounded. Tonic spoke with Toronto-based staff member Isabelle Jeanson at the Nobel Peace Prize-winning medical relief group Doctors Without Borders/Médecins sans frontières (MSF) about daily life on the ground. Here’s her first-person account, as told to Tonic writer Darragh Worland.

Our plane touched down in Port-au Prince on Jan. 14 at 4:50 p.m. – exactly 48 hours after the earthquake. It had taken us 24 hours to travel the short distance from Toronto to Haiti, and we had no idea of what lay ahead. We couldn’t really absorb the full extent of the damage on the drive from the airport to the city, because the quake had wiped out all power and it was already dark.

One of our offices in a house that we rent in a neighborhood called Pétionville was surprisingly unaffected, so that became our base. The staff there had felt the building shake, but there was no damage to the structure. Our hospitals were all damaged, but the offices themselves weren’t as affected.

It wasn’t until the next morning that we saw how bad it was. You see the images on TV and in photos, but you cannot understand the destruction until you are there. It was like a war zone; like a bomb had gone off. Concrete buildings just completely collapsed or were twisted in half. There would be one building reduced to rubble standing next to another that was barely damaged at all. The damage was absolutely nonsensical.

In one neighborhood called Carrefour, medical personnel had set up makeshift tarps on the street outside of a hospital that had been destroyed. A lot of them were students who weren’t even qualified to be doctors. Everywhere there were people with horrendous wounds. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life, because you wouldn’t see that kind of thing on TV. They were lacking supplies, they didn’t even have alcohol, but they were suturing wounds and doing the best they could to help.

I had arrived with three logistics people with us and two nurses, both Americans who had been with Doctors Without Borders for 20 years. We already had about 200 ex-pat staff on the ground, about 80 to 100 of which were doctors, with the other half being logistics and administrative staff. They were all affected by the earthquake. We lost about eight to ten national staff ourselves, people we knew and worked with on a regular basis.

This was a unique kind of emergency for us. We’ve never been so personally affected, where we ourselves were victims. It was a double whammy and that made it hard for us to continue with our work. We had a memorial service in Port-au-Prince while I was there. It was especially hard for me because I have been working with Haiti for three years and I’d already visited twice. I never imagined anything like this could happen.

We set up tents outside the office where we slept in sleeping bags on mattresses that we had in storage laid out on the floor. There were 15-20 of us all sharing the one bathroom in the office. On the worst nights, we’d get maybe four hours of sleep; on the best it was closer to six. But you just have to get up. It doesn’t matter how tired you are. Knowing there are people out there who need you, you just go, go, go, mostly running on adrenaline.

Doctors Without Borders has what we call “hospital kits” – huge, huge containers full of tents and equipment that can be assembled on the ground into temporary hospitals, which are really a series of interconnected tents. Each tent is about the size of a small house. The walls are blown up with air, so they smell just like a new inflatable raft. Then all the wiring and plumbing is installed. Even though I have worked with MSF for almost eight years now, it’s still mind-boggling to me that we can put this stuff together. At best, it takes a full 48 hours to get it all up and ready.

The biggest problem is finding appropriate terrain to set up and this was especially hard in Haiti. We need a flat surface, about the size of a football field. Luckily, that’s exactly what we found: a football field behind a school that hadn’t been claimed by any of the other groups or militaries. We don’t have nearly the resources of the military, but we’re really good at adapting to any situation. We bring in our own generators for power; we ship in water; and we have the technology to purify water.

My job as an emergency press officer is to act as a buffer between the media and the teams but, in Haiti, I also acted as an ear for dozens of the wounded. It was very frustrating for me. I wish I could have done something more. I wish I was a doctor. I found the best thing I could do was to walk around the wards and let people talk, which they seemed to appreciate. Just to let people know that you care is extremely important. It’s the solidarity and the compassion that is comforting on some level. I met so many people that I’m still thinking about today.

There was one girl in particular, a 19-year-old named Sinthia Chéri. She had a terrible wound on her thigh. She had been trapped under a piece of concrete for a long time, so the tissue had begun to necrotize. In a case like that, the doctors first have to remove all the dead tissue, which leaves a gaping wound too big to close. The wound is then bandaged and monitored, cleaned out regularly. We saw a lot of this kind of injury in Haiti.

Sinthia was special. She was so outgoing. Even though she was in a lot of pain, she wanted to hang out on her bed, talk about clothes and just be a regular teenager. Her optimism was amazing to me. I never guessed that she had such a tragic story, until a doctor who had seen us talking told me that Sinthia had lost her baby in the quake. She had given birth on Jan. 4. After the quake, they had nowhere to go. The two of them were sleeping in the streets, where it gets really cold at night.

I think the baby died of cold, about a week later, but I didn’t question her too much. When I asked her about it and why she hadn’t told me, she didn’t want to talk about it at first. She didn’t want to dwell on it. She was really sad. I’ve been worried about her, because the day before I left, she started to develop a fever. I’ve sent emails to find out how she’s doing, but I haven’t heard anything yet.

Now that I’m home, all I want to do is go back. Some of our staff will be there for months. The most immediate needs are shelter reconstruction and an economic boost. After the people regain their health, they need a place to live and work. When I was there, a lot of young men approached us and asked us for work. We were hiring staff, but there were huge lines of people applying for one job. The people are desperate to make some kind of income. Most people don’t have the money to rebuild their house, so they are at a loss of how to find a new home. For now, they live in temporary shelters, with bed sheets attached to sticks and trees. Others sleep on sidewalks or in the streets. Cars have to be careful at night not to run people over.

Doctors Without Borders has the supplies to provide care, but the health care system in Haiti is not working. Some people will need long-term care in rehabilitative hospitals and plastic surgery, especially burn victims. But for all those who cannot donate, words of solidarity are incredibly comforting. Finding bloggers and sending comments of support or participating in online forums, chat rooms and Twitter to send messages of solidarity can also contribute in their own way.

I have never had the chance to say this to anyone, but the response from the public was outstanding. When you’re working on the ground, that kind of solidarity is absolutely inspiring. The responses on our blog brought tears to my eyes. People wrote heartfelt, sincere words of encouragement, like “hang in there” and “you can do it.” That kind of stuff is so helpful on the ground. That is huge, absolutely massive to get that kind of feedback from people.

To donate, go to Doctors Without Borders.

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