Border camp provides relief for injured Haitians (Feature)

By Andrea Sosa Cabrios Jan 27, 2010, 1:08 GMT

Fond Parisien, Haiti - At a mountain camp on the Haitian border with the Dominican Republic, 13 tents and several blue awnings shelter people who were injured in the quake that recently devastated Haiti.

Hospitals are still packed full two weeks after the January 12 quake, and some of the injured have to recover on the floor, lying on small mats where they get treatment from Dominican doctors and US volunteers.

'If we had hospitals to put them in it would be ideal, but we have none,' says doctor Luis Felipe Encarnacion, in charge of the Dominican Medical Association's mission.

The camp was set up on land owned by the US foundation Love a Child. It holds around 180 injured people, all of them accompanied by a relative. The patients were released by the hospital in the Dominican border city of Jimani to free up beds, but they still need medical treatment.

Ten per cent of them are children, says Hilarie Cranmer, the camp's operational director and a member of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. Some only have a limb in a cast. Others have had extremities amputated, while some have extremely painful lacerations.

'This is a patient who needs a graft, but we cannot do it here,' says doctor Victor Manuel Urena, as he treats the injured leg of Jean Benjamin, 15, who lost his mother and father in the quake.

As the days go by, the situation grows more uncertain for many of the victims. In medical centres they get water, food and treatment. But they have no idea what they will do once they leave.

'I don't know how long we'll stay,' says Sylire Messerore, 47, as she lies in the shade of a blue awning.

Messerore, who is at the camp with her two injured daughters, was unhurt as her home collapsed. Her niece, 20, died in the rubble.

'I don't have a home. Where are we going to go?' the woman says.

The camp, which was set up last week, holds six large yellow houses that the foundation built for its own usual aid work in Haiti. But nobody is staying there.

The buildings were damaged by the quake and subsequent tremblors. Instead, they are being used as storage space for aid, which is generously flowing in over the road that links Santo Domingo with the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.

The walls are cracked, and nobody dares sleep inside the houses. Even doctors, who initially sought 'refuge' in a closed place that protected them better from mosquitos, later switched to sleeping in ambulances or tents.

'We should be treating the injured in cubicles. We cannot. And patients do not want to be indoors either,' Urena says.

Very close to the camp, along a dusty road, there are scores of destroyed homes and concrete blocks on the ground. The beige tents donated by the Taiwanese Red Cross are set to be many people's home for months.