Surgeon finds challenges in Haiti hospital
In Nelson, orthopedic surgeon Dr Alex Rutherford mostly replaces hip and knee joints but during a stint volunteering in Haiti, he was amputating limbs at least once a week.
Rutherford recently spent two months working in a Medicins San Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) hospital in Port-auPrince in Haiti.
Rutherford said while his dayto-day work in Nelson typically involved joint replacements, in Haiti the work was centred around trauma cases. ‘‘We probably did an amputation every week that I was there, we certainly had some severe gunshot wounds that would end up with major bone loss that would almost certainly end up with amputation.’’
Some patients had fractures that did not heal, so they would end up with deformed limbs.
Rutherford said working in Haiti presented a different set of challenges, it was difficult to communicate as most people only spoke Creole or French and there was a culture of endemic violence.
While he operated on patients who had been in motor vehicle accidents in Nelson, the safety of vehicles with airbags and the condition of our roads meant their injuries were often not as bad.
‘‘People in Haiti have none of that, there will be two or three people on a motorcycle with terrible roads and no lighting.’’
The doctors he worked with were well trained and good at dealing with trauma.
‘‘Things that we do a lot of here, hip and knee replacements, they virtually do none of, partly because nobody has got any money and partly because they are too busy doing more urgent stuff.’’
The 120-bed hospital in Port-auPrince was built after the 2010 earthquake and there were limited facilities; clean water and a regular electricity supply were not always available.
‘‘It is a very poor country – poor infrastructure and earthquakes, hurricanes, cholera outbreaks and regular political unrest – all of which makes it difficult to have a functioning health system.
‘‘The public hospitals that are there are quite poorly funded and quite frequently go on strike because people haven’t been paid for a month or two.’’
Rutherford said it made him appreciative of the facilities and support in New Zealand’s health system. He was inspired to volunteer with Medicins San Frontieres by former colleague Dr Dick Rawson, who he worked with when he first arrived in Nelson 30 years ago.