I often
complain about the inadequacies of the U.S. healthcare system. As a believer in
healthcare as a basic human right, which should be bestowed onto all regardless
of ability to pay, I often lose patience. However, after Monday I admit that I
don’t celebrate the adequacies enough.
We went to
Port-au-Prince to bring a patient for a CT scan. If this patient lived in the
states he would have had the scan in December and treatment may have been an
option. Because he lives in Haiti, where you must figure out how to get to the one
scanner in Port-au-Prince and pay the $300 before the scan, he didn’t and it
may be too late for treatment. While waiting on labs to make sure we could get
contrast with the CT, an ambulance arrived with a patient from St. Marc. One has
to wonder about the journey this patient took to even reach St. Marc. There’s
no calling 911 here. No one will answer. No one will come. Perhaps they walked,
or took a tap-tap. If they were lucky they knew a friend with a private car.
However they got there, the promise, the treatment, they thought they could
find at St. Marc, they couldn’t. And off to Port-au-Prince they went.
They arrived
at this superior, albeit hodgepodge hospital hoping for salvation. What they
found were caring hands but a lack of coordination. Unloading the patient from
the ambulance took close to 20 minutes. In that time, our labs were complete
and we headed to CT. The patient in the ambulance outpaced us to the mobile CT,
perhaps the worst location for them. There a code began. There a code wouldn’t
end.
The mobile
CT was place in the drive about 10 feet from the adjacent building. Several
obstacles stood in the narrow lane. Generators to power the life-saving image
machine, trees, gurney lifts and other patients waiting impatiently for care.
The family
of the patient coding sat removed from the scene. The men looked in shock, the
oldest female angry and resigned and the children amazed by the fun wheelchairs
provide.
Haitian
nurses and doctors multiplied. Blan emerged from several surrounding buildings.
Equipment was located in the far reaches of the hospital because there was nothing
inside but a mobile CT. Oxygen tanks, face masks, ambu bags, a defibrillator,
fluids. Another defibrillator because the first didn’t work. More oxygen tanks,
these hopefully filled. An adult mask instead of a child’s mask. Gloves,
gloves, more gloves. Back home, all this would be at a patient’s bedside within
1 minute of pushing the blue code button. Here, the supplies were collected
over 20 minutes. Here, the supplies were collected for a patient already gone.
Nothing was being delayed but calling the time of death. Nothing was saved but
fading hope.
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