Amy returns from AMDA Cholera relief mission, Haiti

 AMDA has been conducting cholera relief activities in Fond de Negres Haiti.  The hospital there has, like almost all other centers, been almost overwhelmed with cases.  Amy is 4th year Canadian medical student, but also a fully qualified  nurse.  She traveled in  December to Fond de Negres to join the AMDA team and assist.      While there she wrote back (click for full piece)

"... there is little time for compassion in a cholera outbreak. the "corpses" are highly contagious and need to be quickly cleaned with disinfectant and then put in a body-bag to be buried. i want to give the family time to grieve- they just lost a 19-year-old boy- but the families of the other patients want him gone immediately. someone runs for a body-bag. i pull the sheet over his face as people are gathering around to gawk. his mother is in shock and doesn't seem to believe that he's really gone. she goes over and pulls the sheet down. she touches his face. she pulls the sheet down further and touches his stomach. then she touches his feet, one at a time. i don't know what she's looking for it, but she doesn't find it. she sits down beside him and looks incredulous. I am about to be the only person in the room to cry so i step out onto the balcony and take deep breaths. i manage to pull it together."..

Amy traveled in December to join the AMDA Cholera relief team which had been there since the beginning of December (click for details) .   Originally the teams plan had been to put up an emergency treatment unit, but, having been granted the land to do so, a local 'owner claimant' hastily put up a structure (overnight) to prevent them doing so.   Thus treatment of this potentially lethal and highly contagious disease had to continue within the bounds of the hospital itself.

Amy worked hard to ensure correct protocols were being carried out.  Judging from her observations it could be that many lives could be further saved by more precise adherence to these (WHO) protocols, if only to ensure that proper focus is maintained on those who need minute by minute care by the limited staff numbers.

AMDA Canada works very closely with Rose Charities Canada.  One of AMDA's main foci is emergency humanitarian relief in which it is now one of the worlds most active organizations, often being invited to assist  in relatively difficult-to-access areas (e.g. Myanmar, Central Asia, Sichuan  etc.   AMDA HQ is in Okayama, Japan, and its founder (in 1984) Dr Shigeru Suganami