As Coordinated As Haiti Gets

Late Friday night we received an email with some very good news; despite being told there were no prosthetics clinics in Haiti, we found out the contrary is true.  In fact, Dr. June Hanks, from the Advantage Program (www.advantagehaiti.com) is now in Les Cayes and working at Bonne Fin, CSL, and the general hospital.  We've exchanged emails and this morning I was able to talk with her on the phone.  She has lots of experience in Haiti and is a physical therapist as well as a wound care specialist.  She's been in Haiti since we left and has a protocol developed which includes training all of the patients on stump (aka/residual limb) management.  She will be sending them home with training, instructions in kreyol and an appointment to return to see her in March for temporary prosthesis fittings. This is terrific news because it means the Haitians are getting expert, competent care when they need it.  It's also a little disappointing since we were looking forward to going back down to work there. We spoke about all of the prosthetics that have been donated and June will be sharing a list of the most needed parts with us.  In addition, she has arrangements with a church in Fort Wayne, Indiana to ship all of the needed supplies down to Les Cayes.  Therefore, we can go through our donations, sort what is useful, and ship them to Indiana.  She was excited to hear that we had a lot of  'feet' to donate as well as stump shrinkers.  Although it would seem like most of the amputations would have been done by now,  they are continuing to do amputations as peoples' limbs are getting infected or not healing as they expected.