OSF Treating Haitians as Insects--August 2014

MINUSTAH in Cite Soleil–November, 2006 (Photo by John Carroll)

One afternoon in early 2007 I was sitting in a Catholic Church in the back part of Cite Soleil. I was praying a little but I was hiding too from the trouble in the streets. Soleil is the infamous slum in Port-au-Prince and during those years there was constant tension and shooting between the five main gangs in the slum and the UN soldiers (MINUSTAH) who have been patrolling the slum since 2004.

A few pews to the left of me were young Haitians reading and singing from hymnals and having ad hoc meetings of one kind or another. There were Haitian gang members in this group who were hiding like I was from the MINUSTAH tanks that roamed the slum’s narrow streets. UN soldiers shot from their machine guns mounted on their tanks when they felt the need. I looked up at the corrugated metal roof of the church and saw the bullet holes that pockmarked the roof in a straight line allowing the bright Haitian sun to shoot down into the darkness of this sanctuary.

One of the gang members came up and stood in the pew in front of me. I will never forget the deadness in his eyes. He said that we treated them like they were “insects”. We stepped on them when we felt like it. I replied that many Americans view Haitians as humans and not insects but I am not sure that I convinced him of anything. He stared at me a little more and walked away.

However, I feel that OSF in Peoria is treating my Haitian Hearts patients as if they are insects…just like this young man had told me. For over a decade OSF has not allowed OSF’s Haitian Hearts patients to return to OSF for further heart surgery. And many have suffered and some have died.

Rotchina–January, 2014 (Photo by John Carroll)

Rotchina is a fourteen year old female from Port-au-Prince. I brought her to OSF when she was a baby and she had her pulmonary valve repaired at Children’s Hospital of Illinois. An OSF cardiologist recently reviewed a Rotchina echocardiogram done last year in Haiti and confirmed that Rotchina has a very leaky pulmonary valve now. So she needs further medical care.

I have been working since January of this year attempting to get Rotchina accepted back to OSF and have looked other places as well. But I have had no luck. Rotchina has been quite ill lately with severe shortness of breath and but was just discharged from a Haitian hospital yesterday after a two week hospitalization. She and her mother Junia obtained emergent Dominican Republic visas yesterday and both got on a bus today and travelled the tough eight hour trip from Port-au-Prince to the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo this afternoon so Rotchina can be checked by pediatric cardiologists at a well known hospital in downtown Santo Domingo. However, they arrived at the hospital at 4 PM this afternoon and it was too late for her to have her echo done today. Rotchina and her mom were told to come back next week.

Rotchina and Junia are literally on the street now in front of the hospital with no money and they don’t speak Spanish. Santo Domingo is the capital of the Dominican Republic and has millions of people. It is dark there now and it is a dangerous city for these two newcomers. Junia just called me and asked me what to do. Rotchina is short of breath and both are very distressed and afraid. They have no where to go.

This all made me flash back to the Soleil gang guy in church seven years ago. Both Rotchina and Junia are being treated like insects.

So I called Heurese’s sister Vita. Heurese is a Haitian Hearts-OSF patient also and she needs further care of her heart. But like Rotchina, OSF has rejected her as well. So I recently moved her to Santo Domingo where she is awaiting medical care too. Heurese is staying with Vita in their little rathole shack in the Haitian part of Santo Domingo.

Heurese (Photo by John Carroll)

I explained to Vita and Heurese the dire circumstances of Junia and Rotchina right now and they cheerfully said that they would get a taxi and go find them and bring them to Vita’s place for the weekend. At least they will have a roof over their head and some protection. (If you want to help people without resources it seems that others without resources are frequently the first to help.)

So what is the learning point here? The learning point is that no decisions like OSF makes in Peoria regarding their own Haitian Hearts patients comes without consequences. Rotchina and Junia and Heurese are suffering greatly in Santo Domingo tonight because of OSF’s decisions to bar them from ever returning to Peoria.

This action by OSF would not be supported by Pope Francis, The United States Catholic Council of Bishops, or the founding sisters at OSF who are now in Heaven. This is all tragic but it is all real and happening as I type this post.

Years from now people will ask how OSF could have treated Rotchina and Heurese as insects and not as humans.

John A. Carroll, MD
www.haitianhearts.org