When the momentum for fundraising and the images of the devastating earthquake fades from people’s minds, the people of Haiti will continue to need help, according to Cayman’s Medical Director of the Health Services Authority, Greg Hoeksema.

Dr. Hoeksema recently returned from a 10-day trip to the stricken country. While in Haiti, he visited four hospitals, helping to treat patients and taking inventories of medical supplies and equipment.

Based in Pignon, 60 miles from the wrecked Port au Prince, where there was no damage from the earthquake and to where 37 injured quake victims were evacuated, Mr. Hoeksema said of the town’s Hospital Bienfaisance: “It was kind of crowded in there. The hallways were filled with earthquake victims in beds.”

At that hospital, and others throughout Haiti, medical teams from overseas are in place, assisting victims.

“All over Haiti, there are a lot of medical personnel on the ground. It got to the point where they were telling people they had adequate folks to take care of earthquake victims and medical staff working on a day-to-day basis,” Mr. Hoeksema said.

At Pignon alone, as well as Mr. Hoeksema, there was a team from Minnesota consisting of two orthopaedic surgeons, an anaesthetist and a general surgeon, and a team from West Virginia with a plastic surgeon, a general surgeon, an anaesthetist and a surgical nurse.

“That is why we did not call for more medical help in Cayman. There are still people willing to go. We are kind of holding off on that and staying in touch through the Rotary world.

“When it all quietens down and the world’s attention turns to another place and another story, we hope to be able to be still providing some help,” he said.

Mr. Hoeksema’s trip was funded and organised by the Rotary Club of Grand Cayman and supported by Cayman’s Health Services Authority and Ministry of Health, which sent medical supplies with him.

He treated not just earthquake victims, but the patients who were in the hospital for other reasons, including a little girl who had scalded herself with a hot pan of water.

Among the most common earthquake-related injuries he encountered were badly fractured limbs, he said.

“Me and two other guys divvied up the ward work and helped with wounds that did not need to go back into the operating theatre.

“I did an assessment of the hospital supplies provided by Rotary… who wanted an accurate overview. They have been providing the hospital over the course of time and wanted an assessment of what we could do to plug the specific needs - not just for earthquake relief but longer term,” the doctor said.

To this end, he visited three other hospitals in the towns of Port de Paix and Cap Haitien.

“I have good contacts now at the four hospitals and I’m going to stay in touch with them and with Dick McCombe [Rotary Past District Governor in the Bahamas who is coordinating earthquake relief efforts].

“I think that right now, the acute need has been met. There are still some gaps here and there. They have large amounts of stuff stacked in Port au Prince area. The logistics of getting it where it needs to be are very difficult.

“We had that same issue on a microcosmic level at the hospital in Pignon. There were two rooms filled with stuff that people had sent. I knew what was in the boxes from the Cayman Islands, but I spent a whole day just going through boxes and comparing it to the list of things that the hospitals needed,” he said.

Tense encounter

During his visit, Dr. Hoeksema and some medical colleagues found themselves in a tense situation when a mob surrounded their vehicle near an airstrip outside Pignon and blocked their way with a makeshift barrier of tyres and cinder blocks.

He had been accompanying the two orthopaedic surgeons from Minnesota to their aircraft when they were leaving the country. The crowd, some brandishing machetes and sticks, was upset that supplies were being flown into the country, but not being given to them.

“The crowd was building up and getting rather noisy. I was trying to see if we were really in some danger. I needed to find the driver, who had left the truck and gone into the crowd, so I… went into the crowd to find him. That was about the time they lit the tyres at the roadblock. There was putrid black smoke billowing towards the SUV,” he said.

He managed to contact Guy Theodore, head of the hospital in Pignon and a presidential candidate, who came to talk to the crowd.

Eventually, they managed to walk past the roadblock and the Minnesota surgeons got on the flight, urging Mr. Hoeksema to come with them, but he said he decided to stay.

“Looking back,” he said after his return to Cayman, “I’m not sure exactly how much danger we were really in, but it sure felt uncomfortable.”

Word choice

Asked about his reaction to some furore over an interview with the Caymanian Compass just before he left for Haiti in which he said the “sexy time” to go to Haiti was immediately after the earthquake, he said he regretted his choice of words.

The comment led to some discussions and comments on radio talk shows in Cayman, some even calling for the doctor’s resignation.

“I wish I would have said that differently. It might not have been the best word choice.

“Rotary and other organisations have been doing a lot of work in Haiti long term. The exciting time right after the earthquake is over, now it’s a much more difficult slog to really try to continue to make a difference and keep and maintain that level of commitment.

“The world is turning its attention to the next news story. That was the point I was trying to make.”