Buen Samaritano -- Spanish for "Good Samaritan" (2010 Haiti Earthquake)

Source of information:

http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=11959121
February 9, 2010

Just miles from the Haitian border, Buen Samaritano -- Spanish for "Good Samaritan" -- was created in 1998 as an eye care clinic treating patients just a few weeks a year.

"We never anticipated an inpatient facility," said Dorothy Davison, an internal medicine nurse practitioner who founded the facility with her husband, Dr. Dale Betterton. "They would maybe be here overnight, but certainly not this."

"This" came about when hundreds of Haitian earthquake survivors came here seeking treatment. Davison and Betterton arrived at the facility just a few days after the January 12 quake.

"By the time we got here, there were 417 patients laying here with over a thousand family members," she said. "For the first few days it was extremely chaotic."

Davison and Betterton, through their nonprofit International Medical Alliance, put out a call for doctors and nurses who could care for the scale and scope of injuries.

"We held people as they cried because they were going to undergo amputations," she said. "It was so hard for our surgeons to grasp the lack of resources. We didn't have a blood bank. The people came too late for limb salvage efforts because once you've laid with open crush injuries for three or four days, it's too infected."

The Vermont Haiti Relief Team is one of just three teams Davison praises for its long-term commitment. Each week, a new team organized by the nurses' union at Fletcher Allen arrives for a two-week rotation.

Updates for Vermont Haiti Relief Team at:
http://vthaitireliefteam.tumblr.com/

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http://www.workerscenter.org/node/398
Posted 02/05/2010 by James Haslam

After the earthquake, Haitians began crossing the border into Jimani any way they could, looking for emergent medical assistance. At first it was completely disorganized, however they could get a ride, and some of them walked. Eventually earthquake victims were sent here by helicopter and ambulance as well.

Buen Samaritano was inactive at the time of the earthquake. The systems and supplies sprang up almost immediately, and were ever-evolving as more patients and volunteers arrived. As I write, we have 2 highly functioning, though primitive, operating rooms with PACU, 2 pharmacies, digital xray at the orphanage and fluoroscopy at the main building; we’ve been staffed with ortho and trauma providers, nurses, EMTs and paramedics; infectious disease, ob-gyn, plastics, physical therapy, psychology, and more.