As Haiti grapples with the aftermath of a cholera outbreak, the GW Medical Center is facing its own obstacles of how to help the country.
Since 2004 the University has been affiliated with Project Medishare, a nonprofit organization based in Miami that provides medical assistance to rural areas of Haiti. Prior to the 7.0 earthquake that shattered Haiti’s already shaky infrastructure last January, members of the GW medical community would travel back and forth to the country to develop primary care programs.
In the wake of the earthquake and subsequent cholera outbreak, GW is once again trying to help mend the suffering country.
“We’re trying to reach out and help, but we’re not getting anywhere,” Huda Ayas, the executive director of the Office of International Medicine Programs, said.
Members of the program said they remain committed to supporting the long-term stability of one of world’s poorest nations, but said inadequate coordination in the country has dampened their hope for immediate solutions to the outbreak of the cholera.
“[It’s] not because of lack of interest, but there are a lot of challenges to be able to develop programs,” Ayas said. “There is a gap between decision making and implementation that is often more difficult than the decision itself in Haiti.”
A team of GW students and doctors that last traveled to Haiti in July and is slated to return to the town of Thomonde in March. The team will try to treat a group of diseases that now includes cholera, along with dengue fever, malaria and tuberculosis.
Since the disease’s outbreak in late October, more than 1,100 people have died. Estimates say close to 20,000 people have been infected by the dangerous disease.
Chiemeka Chine, a second-year public health student who traveled with the University to Haiti in July, said the likelihood of water contamination and cholera increased due to post-earthquake population growth in the country’s rural central plateau area.
“You can get drugs and meds as much as you want, but if you want to make a long-term impact, some of the structural changes need to be in place to prevent dehydration and malnutrition,” Chine said.
Other doctors said despite a full-fledged effort, the conditions for the majority of the population are bad.
“Like the Book of Job, they’ve been hit again and again and again,” Jack Summer, a doctor of internal medicine at the GW Medical Center, said. “Things are remarkably worse.”
Summer, who has worked with Project Medishare since 2005, said it can get frustrating to see the country fail to improve.
“Medical people like myself have the wonderful advantage of saying, ‘I’ve helped people and I’ve done something,'” Summer said. “But when we go down six months later, have we actually made a difference?”
