Good News from Haitian Refugee Camp--December 2015

 

Yolanda (Photo by John Carroll–September 17, 2015)

I posted this in September about Yolanda (also known as “Dorolene”), a nine year old girl living with her mother in Park Cadot in Anse-a-Pitres on the Haitian-Dominican border. Park Cadot is a refugee camp in Haiti containing thousands of people who have been deported or voluntarily left the Dominican Republic since June after being threatened by Dominican authorities. Yolanda and her mother were allowed to reenter the Dominican Republic after she became ill in the camp. She had a colostomy performed in a Dominican hospital for reasons that are not entirely clear. My guess is that she had a congenital condition that got worse living in the camp and needed emergent surgery. After surgery, Yolanda and her mother returned to the camp.

Well, I have good news.

With the efforts of a number of people, including a Haitian pastor and Kara Lightburn, Yolanda and her mother are now in Port-au-Prince and are staying with a missionary friend of ours, Karen Bultje. Karen runs an organization called Coram Deo in a dangerous neighborhood in Port-au-Prince.

A couple of days ago Karen took Yolanda and her mother to the hospital in Mirebalais which is a city about 45 minutes north of Port-au-Prince. Yolanda will be reevaluated on Monday of next week to see what can be done about revising her colostomy.

 Karen posted this on her Facebook page about their experience in Mirebalais:

“Yesterday we drove up Goat Mountain to the Hospital in Mirebalais with Yolanda and her mother to see the doctors there. Yolanda has a colostomy. When we were driving back to Port-au-Prince we saw a large group of BOID policemen (5 trucks full). BOID is the special unit of police that handles disturbances on the streets. Mirebalais was peaceful but I was wondering why so many BOID police were there. Today I saw this article and now know why there were there. There were problems at the Dominican border. The BOID vehicles all passed by us as we headed back down the mountain.”

Haiti – FLASH : Two truck drivers killed at the border by customs officers… – HaitiLibre.com :…

It is so great that Yolanda is out of the horrid refugee camp on the border and somewhat safely ensconced in Port with her mother and Karen. Yolanda has a fighting chance.

As I have stated in other posts, the camps in Anse-a-Pitres need to be closed and the people dispersed to better living conditions. And during the last few weeks the camps have been hit with cholera.  The camps are not fit for human habitation—let alone for kids like Yolanda.

Many of Haiti’s problems are preventable and most are solvable. And when people put their heads together (“tet ansam”), the people living in the border refugee camps all could be helped using common sense with simple inexpensive means.

John A. Carroll, MD

www.haitianhearts.org