Doctors Without Borders Doing Heavy Lifting with Cholera in Port-au-Prince

Doctors Without Borders-Drouillard Hospital in LaPlaine
This Cholera Treatment Center is located two miles north of Cite Soleil
April 29, 2012
(Photo by John Carroll)

Doctors Without Borders in Haiti is directing and staffing Cholera Treatment Centers (CTC) in the Port-au-Prince area. During this rainy season, the number of cholera cases increased and sick people need a place to go very quickly for IV hydration. From what I have seen here in Port, Doctors Without Borders is doing the heavy lifting regarding cholera.

I stopped by a CTC run by MSF-France today. (Doctors Without Borders translates to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).  It is an area called Drouillard which is a section in LaPlaine. (Drouillard is spelled Douya in Haitian Kreyol. I know this could get confusing....) It is located just a few miles north of Cite Soleil.

This CTC is called MSF-Drouillard. They have 60 cots and had 52 of them are occupied. They received 19 new cholera patients just today.

Drouillard's roads are dirt and with huge potholes filled with water and almost impassable with a vehicle.  

It is very difficult for a real sick cholera patient from Soleil to get to Drouillard with the roads as bad as they are. As a rule, poor people with cholera have no private transportation, they have no access to an ambulance, and  tap-tap drivers are not wild about the idea of transporting sick cholera patients anywhere.

John A. Carroll, MD

www.haitianhearts.org