"Hands on Haiti" Response Effort (2/4/10)
POSTED ON Feb 04, 2010
COTN co-founder Debbie Clark with a young amputee at COTN's medical clinic
Haitian parents help with cooking, cleaning, and security at COTN's medical clinic while their children recuperate
Loading food for Haiti
Young Haitian patients watching the JESUS film in their native language, French
Clowning around with the children
Doctors performing skin grafts at COTN's clinic
Patients pass the time with giggles and laughter
Read HAITI CHILDREN"S STORIES from the field here.
THURSDAY - February 4, 2010 (4:37pm)
* * TOP THREE MOST URGENT NEEDS * *
(List will be updated accordingly or as needs are met. Please check back often.)
- "To reach into Haiti we desperately need TWO 15-PASSENGER VANS ($19K each) and a TRUCK ($35K)," pleads COTN founder, Chris Clark, currently on the ground in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. To donate to this urgently needed fund CLICK HERE.
- "Let's Eat" SmilePacks and other urgently needed supplies posted to our Haiti Needs List.
- We are also in urgent need of a FLIGHT SERVICE willing to fly much-needed supplies into Barahona in the Dominican Republic. Please contact Dave Schertzer at daveschertzer@cotni.org.
THURSDAY - February 4, 2010 (10:22am)
Though COTN is focusing on the medical needs of children who were injured in Haiti’s earthquake a few weeks ago, we are also concentrating on other areas of need such as food, water, living supplies and the spiritual needs that people have in such a time of tragedy and loss. As more food and supplies are donated and shipped down to our warehouses in the Dominican Republic to be used for those in Haiti, the goal is to work through the local churches to determine where these donations need to go and where they will be best used. To do this, COTN is continuing to work with local churches, the Dominican pastors on the COTN–DR board of directors and their pastor affiliations to help with needs other than medical.
Tomorrow, COTN founders Chris and Debbie Clark will head into Haiti with several Dominican pastors from the pastors association in Barahona to meet with the pastors association of Port-au-Prince. The two groups have worked together before and have already met once to discuss how to best respond to the Haiti earthquake.
“The purpose is for COTN to work through the local church, especially in the distribution efforts,” Debbie Clark said. “We can work through the local churches to assess how COTN can be involved in meeting needs as the containers come in and the counseling teams come in. Some of the pastors here in the DR that we work with know the pastors on that side in Haiti, as well.”
Tomorrow's meeting with the Dominican and Haitian pastors will also cover preparations for the two COTN counseling teams that will be arriving in the Dominican Republic beginning next week. Though the teams will counsel the children in COTN’s clinic a bit, the main goal is for them to train as many Haitian counselors and lay people as possible—even the parents, so they know how to best deal with their children who have gone through this tragic experience.
“Training will be the bigger focus,” Debbie Clark said of the counseling teams. “We found in our work in Uganda that it's much more effective for their own people to do the counseling than for our American teams to counsel. So, we’d much rather train them to do it themselves and that way, they can reach a lot more people.”
Please donate to COTN's "Hands on Haiti" Response Effort TODAY! Your help is still needed for immediate relief and long-term support.
THURSDAY - February 4, 2010 (9:14am)
As children in COTN’s medical clinic continue to heal, some of them have reached the stage of needing to begin rehabilitation. Because of this, COTN has located a place where we can continue to give the children the care they need, as well as provide them with rehabilitation and trauma counseling. COTN will continue to provide for their meals and needs, but it will be a place for them and their families to settle in for the time being. COTN co-founder Debbie Clark said last night that they are still working realy closely with the Dominican health department, following their guidelines, as well as the Haitian Consulate. “They are really supportive and excited about us supporting and caring for these kids before they go back to Haiti,” Debbie said.
Because of the three children and families who are moving out of the clinic and into the other COTN care facility for rehabilitation, there is room in the clinic for other children who are still in critical need of medical attention. Two new children arrived yesterday from a small hospital in Cabral, a town just outside of Barahona. According to Debbie Clark, that hospital is overwhelmed with patients and knows that the COTN clinic has staff and a rehab plan. “It has been great to work alongside of them,” she said of the medical staff at the Cabral hospital. One of the new children has two amputations and the other cannot yet walk due to his injuries. They both may need more surgeries and, according to one of the nurses at the clinic, more outpatient care.
Yesterday COTN founders Chris and Debbie Clark were able to have a meeting with the parents of the eleven children in COTN’s clinic to discuss COTN’s plan for the transition into outpatient, therapeutic and rehabilitation care for their children. “It was a great meeting with all the parents,” Debbie Clark said. Toward the end of the meeting, Chris also realized that some of the parents didn’t understand what caused an earthquake and he was able to explain how plates shift on the earth’s surface—allowing the adults to understand more about what they have just been through.
Please donate to COTN's "Hands on Haiti" Response Effort TODAY! Your help is still needed for immediate relief and long-term support.
THURSDAY - February 4, 2010 (8:40am)
Yesterday was a big day for the COTN medical clinic in the DR and the COTN medical teams that are there helping with the many needs. God was at work to provide the needed tools, supplies and medications through a word-of-mouth stream of people who wanted to help.
Ever since the eleven children arrived at the clinic more than a week ago, surgeons knew they needed to do skin grafts on about three of the patients. The only problem was they didn’t have a dermatome—a special surgical instrument that is necessary for the skin grafting process. Knowing the great need, one of the COTN medical team members from Orlando contacted his brother who contacted a plastic surgeon at Dartmouth Hitchcock, a hospital in New Hampshire, who was able to get a dermatome donated for COTN’s use.
The dermatome was shipped down to COTN’s Florida office. That same day, COTN Florida Satellite Director, Beth Beagles, received a list of much-needed medical supplies and medications from COTN’s medical clinic—asking her to try to find these items to send the following day with the dermatome.
Another one of the COTN medical team members called a friend, Dr. Chris Dobson of Florida South Hospital in Orlando, to see if he could donate all the needed items. Dr. Dobson called Beth a few hours later and told her he had everything she needed. He also connected her to Florida Hospital Shares International, which donates medical supplies to nonprofits and charities that need them. Beth was able to get additional supplies from them. “When I got the call to get the extra supplies that they really needed in the clinic to be shipped out the following day, I knew that I could never do that,” Beth says. “So, for me, it was God’s hand completely at work and I was just there, blessed to be part of the exchange because when I got the phone call from Dr. Dobson, that was all God.”
Through phone calls and friends, a pilot in Seattle helped land a spot for the dermatome and additional medical supplies on a JetBlue flight headed to Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic’s capital, the following day.
Yesterday was the first day the surgeons were able to use the dermatome and they got straight to work—doing the skin grafts on two of the children at COTN’s clinic. “They have been doing surgeries like crazy today,” COTN medical team member Brandy Parker said Wednesday night. “With the skin grafts and the other OR rooms opened up to the people in the community for minor surgerys like hernias. They probably did eight surgeries just for the community. The clinic is hopping. Outpaitent on one side and the skin grafts on the other.”
Please donate to COTN's "Hands on Haiti" Response Effort TODAY! Your help is still needed for immediate relief and long-term support.
Click here to read previous posts (2/3/10 and earlier).