Haiti: a week after the earthquake

On Tuesday morning I looked down at the elderly woman lying in the corner of a hotel car park and suspected that my efforts would be futile. She was in a serious condition and obvious pain: intestinal paralysis caused by a broken pelvis and shoulder, the result of being trapped under tons of rubble. Her treatment should have been simple: not surgery necessarily, just careful nursing. But in Port-au-Prince, the hospitals are barely functioning. Wards and operating theatres are cracked and falling down. Most hospital staff are missing, dead, or too grief-stricken to function.

My patient had nowhere to go. I could see her abdomen visibly distend. It was so tender that even a gentle touch caused her to scream. I placed my ear against her swollen belly: no sound of bowel activity, a sure sign that, left untreated, this problem would kill her. I talked to her daughters, quietly, in my best French.