Haiti doctors amputate to fight gangrene

Warning: viewers may find some of the images in the accompanying report disturbing

So far 75,000 bodies have been buried in mass graves – and doctors from around the world are battling to save lives. Their enemy is gangrene, which can kill. And doctors are having to resort to amputation.

Security at the general hospital in Port-au-Prince is not the issue. Amputation is.

In the aftermath of today’s aftershock, many are still quartered in the hospital courtyard.

The delay in getting them inside – anywhere – is costing limbs and lives. The delay in providing any way of assessing fractures is costing limbs.

No electricity, oxygen, or anaesthetic

Dr Evan Lyon, a volunteer surgeon from Harvard, has worked in Haiti before. He told Jon Snow that operating rooms were being run without electricity, without oxygen, and without proper anaesthetics.

“Standing in front of me there are hundreds of people that have had compound open fractures,” he said.

He went on: “The bigger problem is infection. The bones may heal, they may not heal. We’ve done many, many amputations. People are losing limbs.”

“(Gangrene) has been a problem for five days now. It sets in right away.

“I was just with a woman who lost both her arms and her leg at the time of the earthquake. By some miracle she’s still alive.

“She has been given first aid. Her wounds were dressed. She was given a little bit of antibiotics. But no pain medications. No definitive cleaning or closure of her wounds.

“Thankfully, today she’s up on the operating table.

“Over these last 72 hours we’ve gone from completely non-functional hospital to some capacity.”

Crowded wards

The wards at the hospital are crowded with amputees – people for whom a life already on the edge will be rendered even more challenging.

Hospital Director Alix Lassege told Jon Snow the priority was to fix the power.

“The national plant is not working so we have to use generators 24 hours a day. So we need fuel for that.”

One six-year-old girl at the hospital is in excruciating pain after a wall fell on her. But there is no morphine to be had anywhere.

Surgeon Mary Antoinette Gauthier told Channel 4 News there were so many patients awaiting amputations – “That’s the problem for the operating room.”

“Nothing to conserve the members, the limbs.”