Countless Lost Limbs Alter Life in Haiti’s Ruins

[CC-Conrad Clyburn-MedForeSight]

Colleagues,

As reported in the New York Times ... “Don’t cut off my leg!” Fabienne Jean screamed repeatedly as she was carried through the gates of the General Hospital here after the earthquake. “I’m a dancer. My leg is my livelihood. Please, don’t take my leg.”

...  “It is a sad story,” Ms. Jean, 31, a slim, graceful woman who danced for the Haitian National Theater, said recently, massaging her bandaged stump. “But what can I do? I can’t kill myself because of this, so I have to learn to live with it.”...

... More than a month after the earthquake, thousands of new amputees are facing the stark reality of living with disabilities in a shattered country whose terrain and culture have never been hospitable to the disabled...

...  Some remain in hospital tents swarming with flies; others have moved to makeshift post-surgical centers; and those who healed quickly, like Ms. Jean, have been discharged to the streets, where they now live. All need continuing care in a nation with no rehabilitation hospital, few physical therapists, no central prosthesis factory since the quake and a skeletal supply of crutches, canes and wheelchairs gradually being reinforced by donations...

... Rough estimates of the number of new amputees are based on information from overburdened hospitals that did not keep good records of surgeries. The Haitian government believes that 6,000 to 8,000 people have lost limbs or digits. Handicap International estimates that 2,000 to 4,000 Haitians underwent amputations, and many thousands more suffered complicated fractures, some of which could turn into amputations if not managed well...

Read on at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/world/americas/23amputee.html?th&...

CC

[Clymer/JR]

Conrad:

Important post. Sometimes the sheer scope and magnitude of this earthquake "story" is so overwhelming, that it becomes "too easy" to dismiss as an abstraction - just another horrible natural disaster ... After all, we've seen them before, and we'll see them again ... an unfortunate statistical reality. Stories like this are so very powerful, because, at a personal level, the victims are identifiable, their grief & sadness touches us deeply, and they appeal to our humanity. THANKS!

JIR