18446: Haiti 1804: Civil unrest threatens students' Haiti trip (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Haiti 1804 <ayiti1804@hotmail.com>

Civil unrest threatens students' Haiti trip
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POSTED: 02-11-2004 12:07 AM EST

UPDATED: 02-11-2004 8:03 AM EST

By Kevin Cullen, Journal and Courier

Most of Haiti's 8 million people survive on less than $1 a day -- without
electricity, indoor plumbing, refrigeration and 100 other "essentials" that
Americans take for granted.

St. Elizabeth School of Nursing students Jennifer Fitzpatrick and Katy
Rutter are bracing themselves for all that as they prepare for a medical
mission to the nation March 5-12. But the trip will be canceled if rebel
uprisings that have killed several over the last few days continue.

"I'm nervous about going," Fitzpatrick, 22, of South Bend, said Tuesday.
"I'm playing it naive and not reading the news."

"I'm going to see a different culture and to get out of my own realm," added
Rutter, 22, of Elkhart. "I plan to work with underprivileged people in the
United States."

For the fourth year in a row, students from the Lafayette nursing school
plan to take donated medical supplies to Haiti and care for the poor at free
clinics. They will distribute over-the-counter medications, take blood
pressure readings, treat skin conditions and the like. Serious health
problems will be referred to physicians, using cash donations to pay for
appointments.

This year, eight nursing students and five nursing school faculty and staff
members will make the trip to the city of Jacmel in the poorest country in
the Western Hemisphere. The trip will be canceled if recent armed uprisings
pose a threat, school director John Jezierski said Tuesday.

Haiti has no army and fewer than 5,000 police. At least 42 people have been
killed in recent days during rioting in nearly a dozen towns. The uprising
is being called the strongest challenge yet to the administration of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Jezierski, a veteran of past trips, said that he has contacts in Haiti, and
he plans to speak with returning groups before deciding whether to go. The
trip could be canceled even after the group reaches Miami.

"This is kind of a field trip and I take safety and security very
seriously," he said.

The missions are designed to introduce students to transcultural nursing
through an "immersion experience."

"We believe this is a way to broaden their horizons," Jezierski said of the
future nurses. "In many ways, it makes you appreciate the resources we have
here, and you almost feel guilty thinking about the way we waste them."

The first three St. Elizabeth groups served in Baudin, a remote town in the
mountains. Last year, the students examined 600 patients at a clinic set up
in Jacmel, on the Caribbean coast. Tonya Bol, 21, of Rossville, was among
the students who participated.

"We ran out of medications and vitamins, but we did blood pressure
screenings, checked for scabies (a skin condition) and provided basic health
screening," she said. "People walked miles to get there."

The students stayed in the home of a Catholic priest and conducted the
clinic in an unfinished church. Haitian peasants speak Creole, a combination
of French and African languages, so translators were available to ensure
they understood what medicines to take and how often to take them.

"I wanted a new experience," Bol said. "When else will I get a chance to go
to Haiti and do basic care, helping people? The school prepared us for it,
and I was prepared, to a point, but you can't be fully prepared to come from
the U.S. to Haiti. There can be 20 people living in a one-bedroom wood hut
with a tin roof. One lady divided up a granola bar for her eight kids; I
would have eaten it as a snack ... you see people bathing in the same
streams that the cows are in."

Many Haitians are malnourished. Because they so often lack calcium in their
diet, Americans give them Tums antacid tablets, which are loaded with the
essential element.

The students plan to take time to also visit the beach and do a bit of
sightseeing.

"When people ask me about going there, I have to say it was the most
bittersweet feeling you can have," Bol said. "You want to help, but you want
to come back, too. I don't take food, water and a lot of other things for
granted now. It's still hard to believe that people live that way."

How to help

These items are needed to help the poor in Jacmel, Haiti: Adult and
children's vitamins, children's cough and cold medications, children's
liquid Tylenol, adult Tylenol, antacids, soaps, lotions, Tums and other
calcium-rich antacids, plus pencils, paper and crayons for children.

Donations should be dropped off by March 1 at the St. Elizabeth School of
Nursing, 1508 Tippecanoe St. on the St. Elizabeth Medical Center campus.

Cash donations also are needed to pay for appointments with physicians.
Checks should be made payable to the "St. Elizabeth School of Nursing Haiti
Fund."

http://www.lafayettejc.com/news20040211/200402112local_news1076476042.shtml

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