At the Hopital Adventiste d’Haiti

1:45AM 1/20/2010
Today was a very busy day of travel & logistics.   We have made it to the Hopital Adventiste d’Haiti.  I can dispel all rumors... The hospital stands and is in remarkably good shape.  I actually had to go searching for cracks.  Let me tell you this place is a mighty fortress built on the solid rock.  While the building is sound there is much work to be done.  We were surprised to find a significant number of volunteer doctors and others from the states here organizing and performing triage.  There are over 300 patients here on the grounds who need surgery 50 of them urgently.

Aftershock as I’m writing this,  please keep us in your prayers.  I’d guess it was about a 3.5

The 2 operating rooms are now functioning inside the hospital and they are still using the blue outdoor O.R. as well.  Tomorrow we will do some assessment on how we might be able to convert several other rooms into O.R.s.

Haiti is quickly becoming a country of amputees and is going to need significant long term orthopedic care.  I have great hope that we can start in that direction but I have a long laundry list of medical equipment I need down here right away in order to keep the amputations to a minimum.  While some open fractures can be saved many are requiring amputation, remember we are at day 7 now.  The hospital is running on diesel generator power and diesel is running in very short supply and thus very expensive down here.  I don’t want to sound too down about our situation because like I said I do have hope but we really need to think long term about how we are going to help these people.  We have a great facility here and an opportunity to help one of the most impoverished nations in the world but it is going to take some funding to keep this going.  PLEASE if you can, donate to the LLU Haiti relief fund, these people need all the help we can give them right now and for the future.

I promise to post pics of Hopital Adventiste d’Haiti tomorrow, I just did not have light when I got here.

Good chance of a live webcast to the LLU chapel service tomorrow.