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OHS alum uses her talents to heal suffering in Haiti
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| by: Nathan Treloar |
April 25, 2012 |
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Kara Dobelis comforts an infant at Hospital Bernard-Mevs in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
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At night it is too dark and dangerous to leave the hospital campus. On the days when the power plant is offline, the doctors and nurses simply must make do. Still, what was most difficult for 2003 OHS graduate Kara Dobelis to handle during her time in Haiti were the freezing cold showers.
Dobelis works as a critical care nurse for an intensive care unit in San Diego, and before that in West Des Moines and Phoenix. She was inspired by a group of her Arizona coworkers who went to Haiti soon after a 7.0 magnitude quake devastated the Caribbean nation in January 2010. It wouldn't be until 2012, after a cholera outbreak had been contained, that Dobelis was cleared to go with Project Medishare, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing comprehensive health and development services in the island nation.
"I've always been interested in relief work and have been active in the communities where I've lived," Dobelis said. "I was really looking for something on the international level and did a lot of my own research and it seemed like a solid, U.S. based organization that's been working in Haiti for a long time."
Project Medishare grew from a team of faculty at the University of Miami Schools of Medicine and Nursing who went to Haiti in 1994 to assess the health care situation and explore ways to improve it. The group now operates the country's only critical care and trauma hospital, the only newborn and pediatric intensive care units, and advanced prosthetics facility, and multiple rural health centers. Dobelis spent her eight day rotation at the Hospital Bernard Mevs in the capital of Port-au-Prince from February 25-March 3, 2012. A new team of 25 doctors and nurses arrives each week, which is one of the aspects that drew Dobelis to the program.
"Their main mission is not to have Americans running a Haitian hospital," said Dobelis. "Their goal is to provide training to the Haitian staff in order for them to sustain themselves."
Dobelis was usually too busy working her 12-16 hour shifts to worry about the enormous divisions between this place and the one she left. They ranged from the anticipated: bunk beds, spotty electrical service, even those cold, trickling showers, to the surreal: nightly armed street fights and the gunshot victims they produced, the resignation of the nation's Prime Minister, and a level of poverty and filth that's hard to find even in America's poorest communities.
While transferring a patient to another hospital, Dobelis saw cows, goats, pigs, and chickens eating from the mountains of trash that have been piling up in the streets since the earthquake. She knew these animals were not wild, or pets, they were livestock. The conditions lend themselves to what Dobelis called a, "circle of contamination," and make infectious diseases such as pneumonia, cholera and dengue fever a daily reality.
"The people there don't come to the hospital with your basic cough and cold," Dobelis said. "Many are coming from rural areas with literally no access to health care. A lot of times you just jump in and start performing life saving measures right at that moment because they're that sick."
Dobelis said that the people of Haiti were not necessarily in down spirits, but carrying on as they always have. The country held the lowest ranking in the Western Hemisphere on the United Nations' Human Development Index - even before the quake struck. It may be an uneasy comfort, but in many respects the disaster simply added one more layer of hardship to an already bad situation.
"The earthquake devastated them beyond what they already were. Now instead of just being poor, they are poor without roads," said Dobelis.
The graphic scenery made Dobelis appreciate the luxuries she has being a nurse in the States. She saw how positive outcomes could be achieved with minimal means (there are only two ventilators in the entire country, for example). It made her question whether our own health care system was, in fact, too excessive; whether the high-tech and high-cost measures used so extensively in the U.S. were always necessary.
All these things also made the 27-year-old think about going back. Dobelis said a lot of aid workers leave Haiti believing they know what the solution is, but for her it was a desire to treat the human need, especially in her field of pediatrics. She hopes to organize a supply drive of formula and diapers, simple things that make a big difference when many babies are lucky to get clean water.
"You come back and you can't believe you were just in that kind of a situation, you can't wait to get away from it." Dobelis said. "Then after you step back and soak it in for a little bit, you're like, now I can't wait to do more." |
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©The Ogden Reporter 2013
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