WASHINGTON — Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Matthew hit, Haiti is still in chaos, with 1.4 million people in need of emergency aid and a cholera outbreak that is spreading.
Dr. Robert Freishtat, chief of emergency medicine at Children’s National Health System in D.C., said Haiti already had major challenges before the earthquake and hurricane.
Freishtat has been working in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake. He said the impoverished nation struggles with chronic food and water shortages.
“This is all chronically in place there, and really a lack of social services to provide these things,” he said. “So they rely on NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) to provide some of these basic things.”
Freishtat said the flooding from Matthew has led to a cholera crisis, with more than 1,000 reported cases — though he said the cases were probably underreported. He predicted that the number of lives lost due to the hurricane would pale in comparison to deaths from cholera in the near future.
“Hurricane Matthew caused massive destruction especially in the southwestern part of the country, although (there’s) flooding pretty much everywhere,” Freishtat said.
He said whenever you have that much water contaminating the country’s small water supply, you will have the spread of infectious diseases. Freishtat said older adults and children were the most susceptible.
He also said that he and his wife, Jamie Freishtat, who is a pediatrician, went to Haiti to help save lives following the earthquake. He said they fell in love with the country, the people and the hospital where they worked, Hôpital Sacré Coeur in Milot, Haiti. The couple adopted a child, Luke, who was suffering from severe malnutrition and dehydration, and had been abandoned at the hospital.
Freishtat said one of the biggest lessons learned following the earthquake was that a lot of the money that had been donated never got to the Haitian people.
“A lot of the money that goes through large organizations and through the central government of Haiti is hit or miss, to be honest with you,” Freishtat said. “And some of it may not get to the people who need it most.”
He suggested people who want to help Haiti support local efforts such as Meds & Food for Kids, which is dedicated to saving the lives of Haiti’s malnourished children and other nutritionally vulnerable people. He also suggested CRUDEM (Center for the Rural Development of Milot), which is a foundation in the U.S. that runs Hôpital Sacré Coeur.
