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  • A young Haitian woman is fitted with a prosthetic leg. By some estimates, the Jan. 12 earthquake produced as many as 100,000 amputees. Submitted photo

    Haiti

March 4, 2010

Volunteer: People of Haiti 'very resilient'

By Brian Ojanpa The Free Press

ST PETER — Janet Nordstrom knows the largesse and strength of the Haitian spirit.

“They’re very kind about sharing whatever they have, and they’re very, very resilient,” the St. Peter hospital physical therapist says.

Those traits continue to be tested in the aftermath of the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti, and the challenges are magnified even more for the myriad amputees Nordstrom has worked with.

Nordstrom is a veteran of volunteer treks to Haiti to teach physical therapy methods to rehabilitation technicians and assist those who have lost limbs.

She has made four trips previously — all pre-earthquake — and recently returned from her fifth, a two-week post-quake stint in which she put in 10-hour days in a hospital 90 miles north of capital city Port-au-Prince.

She said on this trip there was no time to waste in getting down to ground-zero assistance.

“When I got down there, we taught them how to wrap their stumps so that they’d shrink right for a new (prosthetic) limb,” she said.

Estimates of the number of quake-related amputees vary widely. Some place the figure at 100,000 with more in the offing as infections claim more limbs.

Even before the quake, Haiti’s woeful health-care system lacked resources for those who lost limbs. The situation was exacerbated by a non-supportive government and a culture that often views amputees as outcasts.

At the Hopital Albert Schweitzer where Nordstrom assisted (hopital is French for hospital), more than 2,000 amputations were performed in the first week after the earthquake.

Representatives of the Hanger Corporation, a prosthetics company, arrived with a cargo of prosthetic supplies, and technicians set about the task of fitting victims with new limbs.

Nordstrom, working with the Health Volunteers Overseas group, trains technicians for the daunting task of tending to Haiti’s suddenly multiplied amputee population.

She said a prime goal of the training will be teaching technicians to help fabricate limbs at price rates impoverished Haitians can afford.

And because prosthetic fittings aren’t a onetime endeavor — children repeatedly outgrow them; adults wear them out — the ongoing availability of artificial limbs may turn out to be the single biggest post-quake medical problem in Haiti. 

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