Injured in Haiti quake at high risk of infection
LES CAYES, Haiti – The home of clothing merchant Felix Pierre Genel collapsed before he could flee outside as a powerful earthquake shook southwestern Haiti. He was dug out of the rubble that same day with a broken arm and was among the somewhat fortunate ones who promptly received medical care at a local hospital. But even so, he could not escape amputation, a common consequence of the calamity.
Doctors at first told the 36-year-old they would try to save his right arm. He had surgery to place rods in to stabilize the broken bone. Then came an infection and a second operation.
“Instead of dying, I took the decision of letting them cut off my arm,” Genel said from his bed at the Les Cayes’ general hospital, his right arm bandaged where doctors amputated it above the elbow. “From where I’m coming from, inside the mouth of death, it’s best that they cut the arm off.”
Broken bones that cause open wounds are frequent injuries in devastating earthquakes like the one that battered the Caribbean nation on Aug. 14. That combination causes a particularly high risk of infection, and even more so when, as in Haiti, access to health care is limited or people delay seeking medical attention in favor of natural remedies.
“The risk of infections goes up the longer you wait to get care, and some of that is related to access to health care, not all of it,” said Dr. Christopher Colwell, chief of emergency medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.
“If there are fractures or broken bones that are associated with those open wounds, those infections can be devastating and can result in the need for amputation, or, in some cases, even threat to life, over the next days and weeks,” he added.
The magnitude 7.2 quake, centered under the country’s southwest peninsula, killed at least 2,207 and injured
12,268 people. About 130,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. Hospitals, schools, offices and churches were also affected.
Health care facilities were already at a critical point before the temblor because of the pandemic. Many of the injured had to wait under the blistering heat, even on an airport tarmac, for care.
The ability to get medical attention also was complicated by a tropical storm that trailed the earthquake and the two-day closure of a major hospital in the capital of Port-au-prince to protest the kidnapping of two doctors, including one of the country’s few orthopedic surgeons.
In the weeks after a massive earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, hospitals only admitted patients in the most serious conditions. Some with simple fractures that did not expose the bone through the skin left without seeing a doctor, only to return later with complications and serious infections.
The nongovernmental organization Humanity and Inclusion concluded that as a result of the complications, “amputations represented an exceptionally large proportion of the surgical operations” and added, “Some amputations performed under extremely difficult circumstances required corrective surgery.”