Home From Haiti

Four months after the devastating 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti, families are still trying to manage the wreckage of their lives, while dozens of medical providers from Ukiah Valley Medical Center have been there to help even in the midst of the most challenging of circumstances. Since the earthquake UVMC, an Adventist faith based hospital, decided to send teams to the Hopital Adventiste d'Haiti in Port-au-Prince, which more precisely located in the Diquini neighborhood, has been at the center of the disaster recovery since January.

Over the course of six weeks, UVMC is sending 50 people to Haiti. UVMC physician assistant Lynn Meadows and Dr. Laura Wedderburn returned late last month after treating patients with limited supplies in an overcrowded environment.

"It was somewhat overwhelming," Meadows said. "(The) compound was like an oasis in a downtrodden downtown." The 70-bed hospital, she said was operating at about 50 percent before the quake, with 50 patients at a time. "Now they have 120 and they have no beds. They have cots for people on the floor."

Assessing the hospital upon arrival on May 7, Meadows found that in Haiti, they were just trying to hold the place together. With no pediatrician in a hospital that had tiny premature babies -- some of whom suffered from malaria, HIV, and high fevers -- Meadows was assigned the job to care for them even though she had no previous experience with emergency room pediatric care. 

Read the rest of the story here.