I slept in a hammock last night. There was some sort of summer camp going on next door. They were chanting and singing all night. We traveled to St. Marc Hospital today to deliver supplies. This is the hospital where cholera started. I saw a woman in a coma about to die from HIV, a man who had just taken his last breath, and people left outside in their hospital beds to die from HIV because there was nothing else the hospital could do for them. I gave a woman a granola bar because the hospital doesn’t feed them. It is up to family members and loved ones. Another woman was still in the hospital from the injuries she suffered during the earthquake in 2010. The number of premature babies in the hospital was overwhelming. Sadly, most of them will die. They just don’t have the care and treatment we have in the U.S. A father stood looking down at his premature baby. The mother didn’t make it through childbirth. He has other children he has to take care of, so he told Dr. Franco that he could take this baby when it gets out of the hospital and bring him to the orphanage at Go-Haiti.
There have been some improvements in Haiti. Paul Farmer and Bill Clinton built the PIH (Partners in Health) Hospital in Kreyol, which provides free treatment to patients living in poverty. The hospital helps them obtain effective drugs to treat tuberculosis and AIDS. However, the patients at St. Marc Hospital cannot reach the PIH Hospital.
