©InfoMihoko works at the Japanese Red Cross health clinic which has been set up on the outskirts of Auto-Meca camp. It is a huge camp situated on a patch of waste land adjacent to a Daihatsu plant, hence the name.
People started arriving soon after the earthquake and now there are up to 17,000 people living in the camp. The scale of it made it a sensible location for both the Japanese health clinic and the British Red Cross mass sanitation work.
Mihoko said: “Three weeks on, around 20-30 per cent of the cases we see are trauma cases related to the earthquake. We are seeing more people who need minor surgery or have infected wounds. Also we see camp-related health issues: itching, rashes, bad stomach problems. These are all due to the way people are living, they are hygiene-related issues. This is why it is so important to take care of water and hygiene in camps.
Psychological affects
©Info“Also we see people who are psychologically affected by the earthquake. The women especially, they tell us they have bad dreams, they are haunted by the experience. We talk to them about it, because this is normal."We reassure them there will be this time, it will feel bad, but with time it will become less.
“To organise everything we needed, to get our equipment and find a location took four days. It is important – if we act quickly and without organisation, we add to the chaos.
“When we arrived at this camp, there was only one latrine. Around 17,000 people and only one latrine! Now the British Red Cross are putting in toilets, we are so pleased. We want to make sure people don’t get ill and decent sanitation facilities are important to stop disease spreading.”
Health clinic
Mihoko continued: “We can manage a maximum of 70 patients in the morning, but usually we will see 50 or 60. Then we open again for the afternoon. This way people are not hanging around, they know they can come later if we cannot see them.
“We have three doctors and five nurses from Haiti, and a Japanese doctor and nurse. Before it was just the Japanese Red Cross but now more and more we are handing over to our Haitian colleagues, so they will take over from us.”
At the clinic there is a man having his leg treated and bandaged, he has a bad burn that has become infected. He has never been to a doctor before in his life. He grew up in the countryside and then moved to Delmas, near the camp. At the time of the quake he was on his motorbike. The tremors shook him off the bike, and it landed on top of him, the engine scalded his leg.
He said: “I feel much better now. I can walk better, not well, but certainly better then before.”
Read Maxene's story about surviving the earthquake.
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