Local nurse volunteers in Haiti

Cindy Mankamyer of Swanton recently returned from Haiti after joining a volunteer medical team with Heart to Heart International, offering medical care in the earthquake damaged areas in and around Port au Prince.
More than two months after the January 12 earthquake, sick and injured people continue to need medical care in the quake-stricken area. While Mankamyer was there, the team of physicians and nurses saw more than 170 patients on just one day at a church-turned-clinic in downtown Port au Prince.

She said there many children sick with malaria, typhoid, and tuberculosis, and some with infected earthquake-related wounds. A number of people had complaints of eye pain, throat pain, and lung congestion, all related to the thick concrete dust that still hangs over the area.

At one point during her two-week stint, Cindy joined a small field team that left Port au Prince and traveled to remote villages, crossing rivers and hiking to mountaintops, to offer medical care to victims who had not seen a doctor since the quake.

"One day, a man with his right arm and right leg in a cast since the January 12 earthquake was carried up the mountain while seated in a small wooden chair," she said. "He told us how he was crushed under rubble for over an hour until he was rescued."

The Heart to Heart medical team cut off the casts using a Swiss army knife and a small piece of wood, and then instructed him in some basic physical therapy techniques for his atrophied limbs and stiffened joints.

"The earthquake-stricken areas are devastated," Mankamyer said. "Families who have lost loved ones and homes are trying to survive in tent cities with little food, no electricity or sanitation, and limited clean water. The Haitian people were very grateful for the medical care, and many of them thanked the 'blanc' ["white" in the French/Creole language] doctors and nurses for traveling such a long distance just to help them."

On her travels to the mountains, Mankamyer spoke with a young Haitian man who described how the quake caused the earth to shake and roll. He and some friends were in a town on the border of the Dominican Republic, more than 40 miles away from the epicenter. He said they were all thrown to the ground. As reports of trapped people came from Port au Prince, he took several friends and drove into the city and spent the next three days and nights digging injured people out of the rubble, and then transporting them to care.

Cindy explained that Heart to Heart rotates volunteers in and out of the area about every 8 to 10 days. The volunteers go not knowing with whom they will serve. The doctors and nurses at the compound with the Garrett County nurse were from Iowa, Kansas City, Missouri, Seattle, Washington, Oklahoma and New Mexico. The two physicians who went on the "extreme team" trek into the mountains were from Iowa and Seattle, Wash. The volunteers, who bonded through their experience, have since created a FaceBook page to stay in touch.

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