March 26th, 2010

I went to Handicap International and the Medishare tent hospital today. Handicap International is a French foundation which does acute rehabilitation care for international disasters. They have set up a prosthetic shop and have hired our prosthetic technicians until we are able to get our shop rebuilt. It was nice to see that some of our equipment and our technicians are being put to good use. Prior to the earthquake we were doing 6-8 prosthetic limbs/month. With our help, HI has done over 60 this month. That is still not nearly enough. We met with the director of the International Committee of the Red Cross this afternoon. We are hopeful that they will help fund the rebuilding of our prosthetic clinic. Project Medishare was inspiring. They have several large tents with over a hundred hospital beds, ORs, NICU, and ICU. It appears to be staffed with volunteers from all over the US who come for a week or so at a time. Most of the earthquake victims have already been treated. The guy that I talked to with the external fixator from his femur to his tibia had been in a motorcycle accident. There were palm-sized newborns, kids with diarrhea, and a lot of infected wounds. The nursing staff made an urgent request for pediatric ICU nurses and as luck would have it we picked up two of them at the airport this afternoon! We will have them down at the Medishare hospital for the 7 am shift.