On Sunday I spent the whole day in the hospital.  I went there in the morning with one of my colleagues who works as a psychiatrist at the general hospital.  Psychosocial program is one of the programs that my organization started running after the earthquake. It’s actually a pretty “revolutionary” idea as most of the developing countries are far behind in this.

Anyway, I got a tour of the ICU (intensive care unit) with the actress Sienna Miller and her crew who were visiting Port au Prince for few days. They actually stayed at our house.  Sienna is a big advocate of the organization — she was here making a documentary.  As soon as we walked in ICU- intensive care unit  (which is just a tent outside the hospital, probably 105F inside), there was a woman seizing. Her heart stopped and the crew of doctors/volunteers were trying to save her. It was very intensive  moment as everybody thought the woman would died. However, 15-20 minutes later, her pulse came back and she was breathing again. Nobody really knew what was wrong with her – doctors couldn’t detect the cause of her illness. Her husband and two small children were there, very sad, crying. It was a great joy when their mother came back to life. Some  pictures below:

#Volunteer doctors/ nurses trying to save the women

# 2 Sienna in ICU

I got a tour of the hospital – all units are in tents, outside in the heat. I didn’t see a single national staff — only volunteer doctors and nurses, mostly from the US. I was told that all the national staff just didn’t show up after the earthquake — they weren’t being paid, some probably found jobs with NGOs. If not volunteers, there would be nobody to help all these people. It was Sunday, supposedly slow day, but people were lined up in front of ER tent. I spent there over two hours and was totally exhausted. During that time, we had three people with shot-gun wounds. One was in a critical condition.

#3 A man with a shot-gun wound dropped off in front of the ER tent

#4 By the children’s tent – cute Haitian girl playing with of of the volunteers