The Adventure Begins
3/11/2013
Packing up medications for the day |
After almost a day and a half
of air travel, Mandy and I finally made it to Haiti to meet up with Dr. Annette
Bosworth and her crew. During the flights, I could not help but wonder how useful
we would be for the medical aspects of this trip or if we would actually use
all the medications we packed earlier. Packing up the medications was truly a
journey in itself because I have never encountered such a massive order all at
once. It was a slow but steady process because we had to unpack the bulk
shipments, assort the medicine by type, and pack everything in buckets, army
bags, and boxes. As we sorted through the various medications, we saw many variations
on a theme: basic health care. We mainly saw medicines for cholesterol,
diabetes, and heart health as well as vitamins and a huge amount of various
antibiotics. From here, we wondered what other serious health issues were
problematic for Haitians. This was when Taylor, who has been in Haiti for over
a month now, created the idea of fundraising for a worms vaccine because it
affects numerous children and adults alike in varying degrees of severity.
Before we left South Dakota, we were able to raise $1,830 which will enable us
to provide 183 vaccines. We are hopeful that we can treat all 183 of those
people before we leave at the end of the week and even more hopeful that we can
continue to fundraise and provide more medical help for Haiti in the future.
Upon arrival to Haiti, we
were both exhausted but relieved to see a few familiar faces at the airport,
Chad and Taylor, to help us load up the four 50-lb bags of medications into the
tap-tap. A tap-tap is basically our version of a taxi except you pile as many
people, bags, or even animals as you can into the back (and on top) of this
pick-up truck. Seeing these tap-taps and other vehicles driving around Haiti is
unreal. I thought driving in rush hour around Sioux Falls was hectic, but it
cannot even compare to the close-proximity, fast-paced driving down here. It
feels like every driver is going 80 mph and coming within 2 inches of other
vehicles and people.
While driving through Port-au-Prince,
Taylor and Chad told us to look around and ask questions about anything and
everything we saw. Something they pointed out right away were the pharmacies
which are bright green buildings – I’ll talk more about my first visit to a
Haitian pharmacy a little later in this post. Besides the assortment of colored
buildings and street vendors, another thing I noticed was the drainage system
which, right now, is basically cement ditches filled with garbage. When there
is a tropical storm of some sort, these ditches fill up and carry the water
away from the buildings into a drainage river—filled with garbage, sewages, and
who knows what else.
My "shining" moment in taking blood pressure readings |
After all of our travels and
a full night of rest last night, we were able to go to a school today and
connect with the teachers’ and other staff members’ basic health needs in hopes
that we will be able to return later in the week to treat the children. Mandy
and I helped check each person’s vitals—their blood pressure and temperature—so
that Dr. Bosworth could have a general idea of where to start with every person’s
treatment. This was a really neat experience because I had never actually taken
a blood pressure reading before Mandy taught me how to use the stethoscope this
morning. Mandy even joked around with me asking if I ever considered being a
doctor instead of a pharmacist because I was pretty lucky in finding people’s
pulses right away.
A typical Haitian pharmacy |
Another awesome experience
from today was when I got to go with Chad to a pharmacy to pick up some basic
pain medications and worms vaccines. Chad said that this particular pharmacy
was very impressive—it was one of the nicest ones he has ever been to. This
pharmacy was probably no bigger than my living room back home. After working at
Hy-Vee for the last two summers as a pharmacy technician, it was fun for me to see how
this Haitian pharmacy was set up. Like many U.S. drug stores, this pharmacy had
essentially everything you needed whether it was toothbrushes and mouthwash or
ibuprofen and Tylenol. One thing Chad told me was that going to pharmacies in
Haiti was like playing a guessing game because you never knew if they would
have what you were looking for or even if they had enough of what you wanted.
After picking out half of what we came looking for, we had to figure out
prices. The Haiti economy is interesting because they use both U.S. dollars and
Haitian dollars. This is where a translator comes in handy because, right now,
the only words I understand in Creole (basically a French derivative) is “merci”
which means thank you. While I am here, I hope that I can pick up on a few more
words and be able to perhaps have a small, broken-Creole conversation at a
pharmacy.
I look forward to the rest of
my stay here in Haiti and cannot wait to step outside the box even more in
these hands-on medical experiences.
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