Haiti Quake Docs: Amputations Down, Infections Up

Jan. 21, 2010— -- The first patients to emerge from the devastation of last week's earthquake in Haiti bore horrific injuries: crushed limbs, broken bones, gashes and open wounds.

In those first few days, amputations became routine for the teams of doctors who ministered to the wounded. There were some cases, fortunately, where such extreme measures could be avoided, noted Dr. Ian Rawson of the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles, Haiti, about 60 miles north of Port-au-Prince.

"We have been doing more surgery in two days than we would normally do in three months," said Rawson, whose hospital has been inundated with patients from Haiti's capital city since the massive quake struck Jan. 12. "We have been able to save some limbs and some lives."

But now, as medical relief efforts in and around the earthquake-ravaged capital of Port-au-Prince enter their second week, doctors on the ground have been forced to adjust. And with more patients experiencing wound infection, sickness worsened by lack of shelter, and malnutrition, Rawson said that both supplies and time are running short.

"It's a race against time with infections," he said. "We have run out of most of our antibiotics, and we ran out early in [pain medications]."

Medical workers on the ground in Port-au-Prince report a similar shift in the cases they are seeing. Brid Kennedy, worldwide regional director of Concern Worldwide, an international relief and development agency that has been working in Haiti since 1994, said that while the doctors with her organization initially saw many cases of fractures and fresh traumatic injuries, "we are now entering a phase of more infectious disease."