The school recently decided to support the Crudem Foundations work in Haiti.
Below is an update on their efforts
Update from Hopital Sacre Coeur
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Today our patient census is 329 in our temporary Tent hospital and 70 in what we are now calling the old hospital. We have discharged over 80 patients to local missions, to families in Milot who have offered to share their homes and some we helped return to Port au Prince. The influx of new patients has decreased to transfers of patients from other facilities that require specialized care that only Hopital Sacre Coeur can offer.
We need at least 20 nurses a week to help care for the increased inpatient volume. Orthopedic and general surgery teams are busy doing reoperations, debriding wounds and infections, treating burn patients and caring for our usual patient volume. Our Haitian staff continues to run our outpatient clinics and our visiting subspecialty teams are returning at their scheduled times. Last week we had a maxillofacial surgery team who treated facial fractures from the earthquake and dermatologists who provided postop wound care and treated clinic patients.
It is now important for us to create rehabilitation services for these patients. Physical and occupational therapists have started to come and are getting the patients up and moving around. Dr Lovejoy, an orthopedic surgeon who was there the week after the earthquake, is assembling a prosthetic lab in a container that can be shipped to our hospital. This will allow us to produce artificial limbs on site for the many amputees.
As we increase our services and inpatient beds we increase our overhead. Our annual budget before the earthquake was $1.8 million. It looks like we will at least double our size which will double our overhead to $3.6 million. The construction plans that we had initiated before the earthquake will have to be revised and our original estimate of $5 million for new construction and renovation will also increase.
The generosity in donations has been inspiring. Many different schools and churches have raised thousands of dollars to help us care for the patients. Individuals have given in many different ways. A typical example occurred when one of our large surgery teams was trying to get to the airport for their flight. They contacted a local cab company in Fort Lauderdale, Ambassador Taxi, and asked for 4 cabs. When the drivers heard that they were going to Haiti ( the drivers were Haitian) they provided the taxis for free.
Please continue to keep our hospital employees, volunteers and the Haitian people in your prayers. We are still struggling to obtain food for the patients. We continue to need donations to enable us to provide the increasing need for care. We will continue to need volunteers, especially nurses, to come to Hopital Sacre Coeur. This will all be accomplished through your prayers and efforts.
Peter Kelly
President CRUDEM Foundation
www.crudem.org
Please visit our website www.crudem.org for recent footage from the hospital, pictures from volunteers, TV and other news articles. We are also on twitter and facebook crudem_haiti.