NHS Grad Helps Out In Haiti—

A Week Of Aid Work Is A Life-Changing Experience

By Nancy K. Crevier

Jason Garbarino ’s greatest hope is that as the months go by, that the people of Haiti are not forgotten. “The whole problem, the whole sad part,” he said, “is what happens to these people next? It’s a chronic issue.”

Jason, a 2004 graduate of Newtown High School and a cardiac nurse at Fletcher Allen Healthcare in Burlington, Vt., returned to the United States Wednesday, February 3, after spending a week in Jimani, Dominican Republic, a border town about 30 miles from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, site of the disastrous January 12 earthquake.

Through the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, he found out about a team of doctors, nurses, and paramedics, including a trauma doctor and a pediatrics ICU doctor, planning to travel to the island to help. “I knew I wanted to go,” he said. He had done a month of health care teaching in Bangladesh as a nursing student, and felt that he would be able to help in this situation.

“When Bill and I saw on the news that this earthquake had happened, I said, ‘Jason is going to find a way to be over there and help,’” said his mother, Carol Garbarino. “I was concerned, but not surprised when the phone call came to tell us.”

Her son has always had an altruistic leaning, said Ms Garbarino. “He volunteered with Newtown Hook and Ladder when he was in high school and was involved in lots of community projects,” she said. His links to the world at large began earlier than his college years, as well. As a high school senior, Jason was a student representative to Australia and New Zealand, and the summer of his senior year he spent three weeks with a host family in Japan.

The team of 20 health care professionals from Vermont arrived in Jimani on January 27, and it was pretty much around the clock work for the entire week they were there.

The hospital was actually an eye clinic operated three weeks out of the year by the Tennessee couple who built the structure, said Jason, and not set up to operate as a full hospital. Fortunately, supplies from donations and what the team had brought with them gave them enough to help the patients who arrived. “Within four days after the earthquake, 450 people from Haiti had come looking for help,” said Jason. By the time he arrived two weeks later, the number was down to about 250 patients. Still, the only way to accommodate the numbers was to help set up makeshift tents.

“We were really flying by the seat of our pants,” he said, “to put something together. We used sheets, tarps, sticks, whatever we could find to make tents,” he said. Even if enough space had been available indoors, many of the patients were wary about being in a building, have suffered through the initial earthquake and several major aftershocks. “People were afraid to sleep inside,” he said.

Jason and his team slept outside, as well, in tents that they had brought with them.

The goal of the team was to dress wounds and help with pain management, as well as address the many crushing injuries and fractures with which patients presented. Amputations by a team of surgeons were sometimes necessary, and providing the patients with antibiotics to prevent infection was also crucial, he said. Patients ranged from the very young to the very old. Some were with family members, some were alone.

Caring Families

He was very impressed with the level of care family members gave to patients. “They would take on daily care, like bathing and even taking the medications from me and giving them. These are things that in the States a nurse would have to do,” Jason said. “The people were amazing, and there was a great level of trust, considering that we didn’t even speak the same language,” he said. Translators were available, but there was always a bit of doubt as to what had been lost in the translation.

Some survivors did not handle the situation as gracefully as others, said Jason. “We had a 6-week-old baby in a head cast from injuries from the earthquake, and her mother kept trying to give the baby away, even to me. She didn’t want to deal with her, like she thought she was deformed. She was very troubled,” he said.

Older children whose charts showed that they had lost all family members in the earthquake had a difficult time emotionally, he said. “The young ones did not seem that scarred, though,” Jason noticed.

The patients who were at the Jimani clinic felt privileged to have made it there, said Jason. “They were gracious for what we could give them, and they received four meals a day and water. The patients and staff went through 64,000 gallons of fresh water a day, and that, as well as the food, was thanks to donations from other parts of the Dominican Republic and world aid,” he said.

On Sunday, January 31, helicopters from the US armed forces arrived to begin airlifting patients to hospitals in the north of Haiti and to US Navy ship hospitals, and every day after that, one to six helicopters a day carried patients to other accommodations.

“The USS Comfort took on a number of our patients. The Dominican Republican government did want to get these patients off their hands. By the time I left on Wednesday [February 3], there were probably less than 100 patients there,” said Jason.

The trauma of going on helicopters was magnified for many patients, as only patients under the age of 20 were allowed to have one relative accompany them. One young woman, 24, whom Jason had prepped, was being airlifted out. Her only surviving relative was one brother, and she did not want to leave him. Making a last minute decision in the midst of it all, “I just said to [the brother], ‘Don’t let go of the stretcher.’ And he just got on the helicopter with his sister and he gave me a big thumbs up. The way I’ve been thinking about it,” said Jason, “is that if I wasn’t there right then, that wouldn’t have happened and they never would have seen each other again. I really believe that. We had people getting on helicopters not even knowing where they were going. These people are so poor and don’t have the communications we do.”

The language barriers did not prevent the nurses and patients from bonding, and saying good-bye to the patients was difficult, Jason found. “I became so connected with my patients, and it was hard, not knowing what will happen to them next. Once the medical issues are dealt with, they have the loss and the poverty to deal with still, and the rebuilding of their homes.”

What is left for many is a great deal of nothing, something Jason witnessed first hand on a day trip to Port-au-Prince, nearly three weeks after the catastrophe. “In Port-au-Prince, I saw pure destruction of the whole city. There were tent cities with thousands of people, and they are still not getting enough aid,” he said. While there, he heard estimates that thousands more could die, as primitive living conditions lead to the spread of disease throughout the tent cities.

At no time, even visiting Port-au-Prince, did Jason feel in harm’s way, but he is concerned that as time goes on and adequate assistance does not arrive, conditions could become more dangerous for the people there, as well as aid workers.

Nonetheless, Jason holds on to hope for the people of Haiti. “From what I saw, they are a very resilient people, always looking forward,” he said.

Relieved

The Garbarinos met their son at the airport when he arrived back in the states, relieved that he was on homeland. “You want to protect your kids from this kind of thing in life, but it is life, and he’s in a good position to do these things,” Ms Garbarino said. She observed that the experience had left Jason “a little guarded. This experience, as short as it was, is life-changing.”

The Garbarinos had been able to watch videos and read reports all week long on the Vermont health care workers’ experiences, due to members of Burlington’s WCAX news team embedded with the group. “We did see some still pictures of Jason, and that was comforting. But he didn’t tell us he went to Port-au-Prince until over lunch today,” she said, adding, “Probably a good idea.”

There is some culture shock in returning to his life in Burlington, said Jason, and realizing how very fortunate he is. “I am most proud of knowing the people that I cared for received the best care I could provide under the conditions. I am proud of all the people who took the journey with me and the personal sacrifices the people I traveled with made, the dangers they endured to help people in Haiti,” said Jason.

The Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals continues to send new groups of health care workers to Haiti, and graciously accepts donations in order to continue that support. Mail tax-deductible donations to The Vermont Haiti Project, 25 Iris Lane, South Burlington VT 05403, with a designation of “medical team” written on the check. For more information, contact Jason at jason.garbarino@gmail.com.

“While there are so many problems in our world, it’s amazing what we are able to do when we can all come together. I would absolutely do it again,” said Jason.