Local doctors are saving lives in Haiti

<p>If you have a manual breast pump in good condition that you'd like to give away, contact Dr. Julie Clark immediately.</p><p>The Petaluma Health Center-based obstetrician/gynecologist is heading for Port-a-Prince, Haiti, early next week, and she says the pumps will be used by nursing mothers who are willing to share their milk with abandoned infants. That way, the babies will have a better chance to survive in a place where there is no running water and many people are living on the streets.</p><p>Even before the earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas on Jan. 12, Haiti was considered the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere. The average life expectancy was 42. Now the situation is even worse and the health of everyone — from newborns to the elderly — is at risk.</p><p>But Clark, 47, believes she can lower the odds, even just a little, by volunteering her time and skills for a two-week “rotation” in Haiti with the nonprofit organization, MaterCare International.</p><p>“I got an e-mail from MaterCare,” she said, asking for volunteers to go to Haiti. “It seemed like a good use of the time and skills that I have, in a place that's so forlorn and demolished.”</p><p>Clark, who is originally from San Luis Obispo, by way of New York City, said this is her “first medical mission, and she has been “talking with every person I can find who's done medical missions in Haiti, sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean,” to prepare herself for the experience. She has also been brushing up on her Creole, the language of the Haitian people and one she had already begun to learn for working with Creole-speaking patients at the health center.</p><p>One of the doctors with whom she has been communicating is Adam Kawalek, an internist and traveling hospitalist, who helped set up the hospitalist program at Petaluma Valley Hospital. Kawalek normally divides his work time between Los Angeles, Hawaii, Petaluma and a fourth location, but he took off a month in April and May to volunteer with the International Medical Corps in Port-au-Prince.</p><p>“I felt an obligation to help in a part of the world that is so close to us and yet so destroyed,” he said.</p><p>An additional motivation, said Kawalek, 33, who grew up speaking French and English in Montreal, is that Montreal has a large Haitian population, and some of the people he knows back home lost friends and relatives in the earthquake. </p><p>In Port-au-Prince, Kawalek worked 10- to 12-hour shifts in 110-degree weather — first in a makeshift tent hospital and, eventually, in the still-intact portions of the university hospital. His job was managing 20 to 25 patients in an intensive care unit that the volunteer doctors had established.</p><p>“I saw everything from unchecked cancer cases, to the basic things like asthma and heart failure, to infections from injuries and amputations to malaria,” he said.</p><p>Along with the other volunteers, Kawalek spent his non-working hours cloistered in a hotel compound, sleeping in a large conference room in his sleeping bag and socializing in the hotel bar with journalists, documentary film makers and people working with nonprofit organizations.</p><p>Kawalek said it was unsafe for the doctors and nurses to go out on their own because there is “complete anarchy” in the city — “no police visibility, no money” and only the food brought in by nonprofits.</p><p>“I don't know who's in charge,” he said. “There are non-profits on every corner distributing money, clothing and medicines.”</p><p>On the other hand, Kawalek praised the people of Port-au-Prince for rising above their dreadful circumstances with music, dancing, parties, barbecuing in the streets and looking out for each other's welfare.</p><p>“The people's spirits are amazing,” he said, “their compassion, their giving.”</p><p>The thing that touched him most was the way family members took care of their loved ones in the hospital, staying with them 24 hours a day, bathing, clothing and feeding them and even giving them their medications.</p><p>“It made me feel hopeful for the human race as a whole, people in such dire conditions taking care of each other,” he said. </p><p>And now it's Clarke's turn to experience the difficulties and satisfactions of working with the Haitian earthquake victims. </p><p>In addition to the manual breast pumps — two of them already donated by her sister and niece — she will be bringing sterile drapes and nearly expired equipment collected by the staff at Petaluma Valley, her own supply of food and hand cleaners, cloth diapers, sippy cups and medication to prevent preterm labor and postpartum hemorrhaging. She is also hoping to set up a regular rotation of Petaluma area doctors, nurses and midwives to work in Haiti.</p><p>While she is there, she will be sending regular reports to the Argus-Courier, with pictures and stories. Check www.petaluma360.com next week for her reports. To find out more about Kawalek's experiences in Haiti and view his photos, visit his Web site at adaminhaiti.blogspot.com.</p><p>(Contact Lois Pearlman at argus@arguscourier.com)</p>