Emergency Operation

January 12, 2010, 4.53 pm: a massive seism devastates Haiti. ALIMA immediately creates an association with the Clinique Lambert, in Port-au-Prince, to set up a traumatology center. At the end of the month, less than three weeks after the earthquake, more than 2.500 wounded people had been treated, and 400 people had received surgery.

Below : the emergency part of the project

After this immediate help to the people wounded by the earthquake, ALIMA and its local partners are taking care of the aftermath of the seism for wounded people. The objective is to give back their autonomy to badly injured persons. 700 orthopedic and plastic surgery interventions are planned for the whole year 2011.

This second phase is no less important than the first one after the seism, as advanced orthopedic care, transplants or fractures could not be treated in the emergency.

The necessity of maintaining the care to the wounded people

If we consider the nature of the wounded people, a staggering proportion of the patients still need to be taken in charge, whereas the main part of the emergency help has gone from the country. ALIMA whished to stay in Haiti in a long-term basis, in order to keep a follow-up of surgery care, nurses and physiotherapists. Besides the current care given by our teams in Haiti, we organize visits of orthopedics specialists adapted to the demand (for instance concerning hand or hip surgery).

Today, almost 200 patients are externally followed. Our private hospital has twenty beds which allows us to treat the people immediately if need be, in surgery or post-operating field. The possibility is also to treat patients that have been operated by the numerous organizations that were here after the earthquake but that have left the country after the emergency period.

Our long-term project aims at offering the possibility for reconstructing orthopedic and plastic surgery to the most severe cases, up to ten interventions a week.

This operation is made possible thanks to the cooperation with the Chaîne de l’Espoir and Dr  Margareth Dégand’s Clinique Lambert, and also thanks to the funding from many single people, Haitian firms and institutions. This is a good example that the ALIMA philosophy of the necessity to work in partnership can prove to be very efficient.

After the earthquake, the mobilization of orthopedic and plastic surgery teams would have allowed to take care of sick people with a relatively high quality given the emergency and the staggering number of cases to treat; associated with the reconstructing surgery operations, this would have made possible to maximize the possibilities of recovering for the patients that were curated.

ALIMA’s Action in Port-au-Prince: Some Figures

Permanent Staff: 25 Haitians et 3 International people, plus regular surgery visits

2010 Budget: 600.000 euros

Staff during the emergency period: in 2009, more than 120 International people, including 17 surgeons and 15 anesthetists. 

2009 Budget : 1.1 million euros

Partners: Clinique Lambert, Chaine de l’espoir, Tulipe, Fondation de France