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Local doctor offers help in Haiti |
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Written by Sherri Gallant Lethbridge Herald
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Tuesday, February 09 2010, 9:38 PM |
Coming from South Africa, Daniel Bester had a pretty good idea what sort of medical care people would be needing in Haiti, nearly a month after the devastating earthquake.
The Lethbridge-based physician, who runs a part-time clinic in Cardston, began making plans to get to Haiti as soon as he heard about the quake. Bester and a group of nurses he assembled returned from Port-au-Prince Sunday, having treated 1,750 patients in eight days.
“I’d been watching for two or three days the extent of the damage and the suffering down there, and I felt, here I am looking at in-grown toenails and people with sore throats while people are losing limbs and life down there,” said Bester, who’s lived in Lethbridge for nearly a decade. A general practitioner with emergency medical experience, he worked for a number of years on the Blood Reserve, as well.
“Prior to me leaving, I realized that by the time I got there, the acute phase of this condition would have run its course; all the amputations and so forth. The stuff that we would deal with was going to be primary care. Just because there was a disaster doesn’t mean people aren’t still going to get sore ears and infected throats and diarrhea and high blood pressure and diabetes.”
The global community has flooded Haiti with antibiotics and pain medication, but insulin and diabetic supplies are non-existent and so are drugs for high blood pressure, mental illness and other maladies.
“We had patients who’d had no blood pressure pills for three weeks and their blood pressures were 220 over 140 and they were on the verge of stroking. We saw diabetics who hadn’t had any meds for two or three weeks.”
Bester’s team’s airfares were covered thanks to funding from pharmaceutical giant Astra-Zeneca, and local pharmacies and businesses donated supplies and medications.
“I covered the rest of the cost myself and we headed out,” he said.
They stayed in the compound at an orphanage where other medical teams had gathered as well. Each morning, they met to determine where care was needed, then fanned out for the day. Bester’s group provided care and medicines from their rented vehicles, in a different location each day.
One nurse would do triage, patients would then see the doctor, and finally get medications they needed from nurses at their makeshift pharmacy. At one point, when they had set up beside the ruins of a church in a dangerous part of Port-au-Prince, an aftershock hit. First they heard a sound like pebbles being tossed on the floor, then a rumble that toppled a huge wall that had been providing some shade.
“Thank God it collapsed inward and not on us,” Bester said. “But the people freaked out — you can’t imagine — the wail, and the shriek of fear when the thing started to collapse.”
While in the city, Bester’s group met with a Korean casting director now living in Los Angeles — a former Canadian — travelling with a group of doctors from South-Central L.A.
“He paid for the private jet and all their expenses. He took 2,000 pictures on my camera, and he must have taken 5,000 of his own as well.”
Bester returned Sunday and went back to work Monday morning, not having had a chance to look at the images.
“My wife, Jenny, said they are the most amazing photographs — the pensiveness of the old people, some of the kids with snotty noses, children crying.
“It was quite an experience. I thought I was totally de-sensitized, I’ve lived in Africa and I’ve seen war-torn places and squalor and despair. But never have I seen destruction on this scale. It was just overwhelming. Enormous.”
Bester and the nurses spent a day in the Dominican Republic debriefing before their return flight, each determined to ensure assistance from southern Alberta continues. He’s working with the south zone of Alberta Health Services in hopes of amassing standing teams of doctors and nurses, ready to tag-team to Haiti for short tours of perhaps 10 days.
“The goal is to not forget, to carry the torch,” he said.
To contribute in any way to the Chinook Medical Mission, email
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