25537: Wharram - news - Local Doctors Aid Looted Hospital in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Bruce Wharram <bruce.wharram@sev.org>

The Palm Beach Post

Local Doctors Aid Looted Hospital in Haiti

Jul. 1--The looters that swarmed through the Haitian hospital were so
thorough they even ripped the plug off the cord of the only lamp in the
operating room.

Taking advantage of the chaos created by a fallen government, they also
stole mattresses, beds, doors, medical equipment, sinks, toilets, and an
air-conditioning unit. The Port-au-Prince hospital was stripped of almost
everything of value. The looters sold their booty on the black market. What
was left was outdated, at least as old as the 38-year-old hospital itself.

That was how Dr. Wilhelm Larsen, a semi-retired oncologist in West Palm
Beach, found the hospital when he visited his native Haiti in April 2004.
His brother Dr. Alex Larsen, a cardiologist, had just been named the
hospital's medical director. Doctors at the ravaged hospital affiliated with
the University of Haiti's medical school are struggling to treat patients.

Larsen returned to West Palm Beach, and he and Dr. Albert La Torra, the
director of Columbia Hospital's wound care clinic, collected used medical
equipment from Columbia Hospital. This week a barge containing $750,000
worth of equipment left Miami for the Port-au-Prince hospital. The two
doctors are flying to Haiti next weekend to help unload and set up
everything from mammogram machines to IV poles to an electric typewriter.

"It's purely humanitarian," La Torra said this week. He has set up the
nonprofit La Torra Larsen Medical Foundation to pay for the project and
plans to collect and send at least two more loads of donated medical
equipment.

The first shipment, donated by HCA-owned Columbia Hospital, included two
sonogram machines and eight cardiac monitors. La Torra said the mammogram
machines will be the only ones of their kind in Haiti.

Eric Goldman, Columbia's chief operating officer, said the donated equipment
was slated to either be sold to a remanufacturing company or scrapped as
junk.

"He (La Torra) told us how health care facilities didn't have things as
simple as doors on all the rooms," Goldman said. "It was nice for the
hospital because we're able to see first hand who it's helping."

Goldman said JFK Medical Center and Palms West Hospital, the two other HCA
hospitals in Palm Beach County, also plan to donate equipment to the
doctors' cause.

The medical equipment will arrive in a country known for its instability.
Haiti's latest unrest began in December 2003 with protests against
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country's first democratically elected
president. He was later thrown out by the Haitian army, reinstated by the
United States and eventually fled to exile in South Africa in February 2004.

The chaotic environment has hit public health care the hardest, said Dr.
Jean Pape, a professor of medicine at Cornell University's Weill Medical
College and the founder and director of Les Centres GHESKIO, a nonprofit
clinic in Port-au-Prince. He said in Haiti health care is provided by
public, nonprofit and for-profits hospitals and clinics. The nation's three
most deadly medical conditions are HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and respiratory
infections.

Ford Eloge, a Haitian native and a reporter for two Haitian radio stations
in Palm Beach County, said it's hard for Haitians to get medicines. He also
said people in the Haitian countryside have to walk miles to reach a medical
clinic and instead many rely on remedies made from plants to heal
themselves. Pape said there's one doctor for every 10,000 people; in some
remote areas, there's only 1 doctor per 50,000 people.

Eloge doubted whether the shipment of medical supplies from Columbia
Hospital would make a lasting difference at the Office D'Assurance Accidents
Du Travail Maladie Et Maternite hospital.

"To me, it's temporary because of the lack of a good system. We have
corruption in Haiti. You can bring a medical tool today and tomorrow it is
up here," he said, referring to people who sell stolen goods on the black
market.

But Pape said the equipment would be helpful as long as there is a way to
repair it as needed.

"If the hospital has good community support they have nothing to fear," Pape
said in an e-mail to The Palm Beach Post. "We have never lost a pencil in 25
years and we have no armed security."

Larsen and La Torra realize that violence and looters might upend their
plans. But the two friends -- who have talked for more than 20 years about
how to create a health care system in Haiti -- think that the time is right
to act. With Larsen's brother leading the hospital, they say they aren't
worried about corruption. And the doctors point to the elections scheduled
for October and November as a chance for the nation to create a democratic
government.

Their other plans include building clinics in Haiti's villages and staffing
them with local doctors and nurses as well as trained residents. They also
want to bring U.S. doctors to Haiti to teach and ask pharmaceutical
companies to donate drugs. They want to build a new medical and nursing
school. La Torra said they plan to start raising money for these projects
through their foundation.

"We're getting old. We have to take a chance. In 10 years, I don't want to
say, I wish," Larsen said. "Haiti has the best chance to become stable that
it's ever had."

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Palm Beach Post, Fla.

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