What's new in Morne Rouge

It has been a slow week here at MamaBaby Haiti, mostly due to the torrential downpours we have been experiencing. Apparently in Haiti people have a severe aversion to the rain, this is funny to me as I grew up in Oregon but when the rain puts such a halt on your activities of daily living, I can see how you might be hesitant to go out in it. Edie, the lead midwife thinks we will have a huge flood of babies since we have been having a dry spell which would be okay by us as we are eagerly awaiting more sweet little babies to be born here! The clinical side of things is moving along as normal, less patients show up but we still have full days of seeing patients with three Physicians working-I guess “slow” is a relative term. We have been seeing many return patients which is great as we can track how out treatments have been working and are able to know where we might need to tweak protocols. The limiting step is still the medications, supplements and botanicals that we have to ration out for each patients treatment protocol. I cannot even imagine what it would be like to have all of the botanicals we would like to use or an endless supply of things like vitamin C and quality multivitamins so we can give a few weeks worth at a time. In my view of medicine, not only do we need to treat the underlying pathology or illness but we need to be able to support the body while it heals. If we can get people to a healthy baseline, they are less likely to contract many of these illnesses that can be fought off with an effective immune system. Keeping our patients healthy is as important as treating their diseases. One of our most remarkable cases has been a young girl who had impetigo so severe it looked as if she had burns covering her entire face, ears, and some of her extremities. She was also severely malnourished, delayed physically and was barely able to sit up. Her mother was quite diligent about bringing her back for routine checkups and she has now been seen five times. We saw her last week for a cough and she looked phenomenal! A completely different child, her skin is healing beautifully, she appears stronger every visit-sitting up, looking alert and most important she is becoming a happier healthier child.