Should OSF-Saint Francis Medical Center be Sued by Haitian Survivors?--March 2016
 |
| Jackson Jean-Baptiste--May 2005 (Photo by John Carroll) |
The largest cholera outbreak in modern times is occurring in Haiti right now. The epidemic started in 2010 after a Nepalese UN soldier accidentally brought the cholera bacteria to Haiti at it was disposed in a river just north of Port au Prince.
During the last five and one-half years at least 770,000 Haitians have been infected with cholera which has resulted in 10,000 deaths. (In my opinion, both of these numbers dramatically underestimate the true number of cholera victims.)
Haitian cholera survivors have a lawsuit against the United Nations. The lawsuit was brought by a Boston-based organization Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti on behalf of 5,000 cholera victims and their families. They want the U.N. to end cholera by installing a national water and sanitation system; pay reparations to cholera victims and their families; and publicly apologize for bringing cholera to Haiti.
Last year a federal district judge dismissed the class-action suit, ruling that international treaties immunize the U.N. from lawsuits. The plaintiffs appealed the lower court’s dismissal and a three-judge federal appeals court panel held a hearing March 1 on whether the U.N. should be held accountable for Haiti’s devastating epidemic.
An IJDH attorney’s states: “The U.N.’s conditional immunity does not authorize impunity.” Just because the UN is usually immune for problems that occur where they are stationed in a country shouldn’t mean that the UN is exempt from any punishment whatsoever.
I think OSF-Saint Francis Medical Center (OSF-SFMC) in Peoria deserves a lawsuit too. Like other very large medical centers, they have their share of existing lawsuits, but this one would be quite different.
For over a decade OSF-SFMC has refused Haitian Hearts patients the ability to come back to Peoria for repeat heart surgery. It is very hard for me to find other medical centers in the United States to accept these patients. They have been operated at OSF-SFMC and they can be challenging cases. We believe that these young Haitian patients are OSF’s medical and ethical responsibility. Other medical centers around the United States believe that OSF should take care of their own Haitian patients.
I know three young Haitians who have died since the embargo on them was placed by OSF in the early 2000’s. Jackson Jean-Baptiste is one of them.
Jackson Jean-Baptiste–December 2005 (Photo by John Carroll)
Jackson was a young man who Haitian Hearts had brought to OSF in the late 90’s and again in 2001 for heart surgery. He had a history of rheumatic heart disease which caused his valves to fail.
During the spring of 2005, Jackson was doing poorly in Haiti and needed to come back to OSF for repeat heart surgery. But OSF did not answer my requests to allow him to return.
On December 1, 2005 Maria and I were working in Haiti when Jackson’s mother Rosette and sister Nadia brought Jackson to us. They carried him part of the way from his two room shack high in the mountains above Port-au-Prince. Jackson was in cardiogenic shock due to severe heart failure. And we had no place to take Jackson for care in the United States or Haiti.
So we put Jackson with us in the one room where we were staying in Port-au-Prince. For the next month he laid in a plastic lounge chair in our crowded room. And we treated him for congestive heart failure with no monitors, no labs, and no tests. All we had was old fashioned clinical acumen and medications that we had brought from the States in our suitcases. And we tried to supply Jackson with a constant infusion of hope as the days went by.
Nadia and Rosette would visit Jackson occasionally and bring us fresh mangos as a form of payment.
Jackson slowly improved but he was worried that we would leave him and return to the United States without him. As usual OSF in Peoria did not respond to our requests for Jackson and so we worked nonstop attempting to find Jackson a medical center in the US. Finally Cleveland Clinic accepted him and we all flew from Port-au-Prince to Cleveland on December 27, 2005.
Jackson was admitted for a couple of weeks to Cleveland Clinic but he died without surgery. He surffered miserably during the last few days of his life.
At his autopsy, I had Jackson’s heart in my hands. His mitral valve that we repaired at OSF was calcified and was the prime cause of his death. All he had needed was a new mitral valve…but this was denied.
Here is Jackson’s obituary in the Peoria Journal Star.
We had a visit with Nadia and her family a few months after Jackson’s death. Nadia, her four siblings, and her mom were living in the same tiny two room abode without running water. Nadia spoke lovingly of the people in Peoria that had helped Jackson. He is buried in a little town outside of Peoria. Nadia asked me if she could come to Illinois to put a flower on Jackson’s grave. I told her “probably not”.
Nadia (Photo by John Carroll)
Years before in 2003 I took the problem of OSF’s negligence of Haitian Hearts children to The Catholic Diocese of Peoria. I was worried that OSF’s policy would lead to the death of Haitian Hearts patients like Jackson. I met with Bishop Daniel Jenky and asked for a Catholic Tribunal Court to “search for the truth” regarding OSF’s denial of Haitian patients. However, Bishop Jenky’s fear of OSF’s power was obvious when he told me that OSF was a “1.6 billion dollar industry” and he quickly refused a Catholic Tribunal Court against OSF stating, “I won’t rule against OSF.” The Bishop had great fear of OSF’s influence in our local business community and wanted as few enemies as possible as he was starting his Capital Campaign for the Diocese. A few years later Jackson and others would end up as collateral damage.
Nadia and her mother and siblings still live today in the same place as they did when we were caring for Jackson. They are similar to the thousands of extremely poor cholera victims. They have no money to hire attorneys and have no say in almost anything. No one would expect a lawsuit from them.
I honestly don’t know if OSF broke civil law by refusing Jackson and others from returning to OSF for repeat surgery. I don’t know how to even begin a lawsuit over such a matter. I guess I would ask the following question: When can a medical center say they are terminating care on a patient? An hour after surgery? A day after surgery? A month after surgery? Or years after surgery? I would also ask, if the patient has no money like Jackson Jean-Baptiste, can care be stopped at any time?
If I could “design” the lawsuit it would be similar to IJDH. I believe IJDH is asking 100,000 dollars for each cholera victim who died. Haitian Hearts would do the same even though we know that no amount of monetary recompense would ever replace Jackson. We would ask for an apology from OSF to Jackson’s family. (Nadia and Rosette are fully aware of what happened to Jackson.) And OSF, like the United Nations, would need to make things better in Haiti. Any previous Haitian Hearts patient operated at OSF would need to be accepted back by OSF if they needed repeat surgery.
The lawyers would have to be from outside of Peoria for the tentacles of Peoria reach deep. OSF has a very strong law team and are paid very well to defend OSF. But there is no question about who is “right” here.
“The law is a common frame for seeking justice, but it will never be perfectly able to deliver just outcomes. Sometime we need to think outside the legal box. Responsibility and accountability are not only legal concepts — they are also political and moral ones. “(Washington Post–March 28, 2016) The Mission Philosophy of the founding Sisters of OSF has not been followed. And the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services from the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops has been ignored.
Dr. Paul Farmer has stated, “What if the fatality rate isn’t the virulence of the disease but the mediocrity of the medical delivery?” In this case of OSF vs. Jackson Jean-Baptiste there was not a “mediocrity” of medical delivery– there was no medical delivery in the end.
Clinicians and medical centers have an ethical duty to care for patients, especially poor patients. The medical profession has protocols what to do for patients. And for a young patient whose valve was failing after being operated at OSF, the protocol was to replace Jackson’s valve and not just watch him die a slow death.
If OSF can reject Haitian kids, they can reject people much closer to home…maybe in the 61605 zip code of Peoria? Protecting Haitian kids now may protect us from medical negligence in the future.
This is a dark chapter in OSF’s history in Peoria. OSF can be forgiven but this should not be forgotten.
OSF-Children’s Hospital of Illinois (Photo by John Carroll)
John A. Carroll, MD
www.haitianhearts.org
11 replies on “Should OSF-Saint Francis Medical Center be Sued by Haitian Survivors?”
Robert Kapanjie
says:
The cholera epidemic in Haiti has nothing to do with OSF. You cannot conflate the two. That being said I do believe OSF owes a responsibility to the patients it has operated on to provide continuing care particularly when open heart surgery is not available in the native domicile. When an organization such as the IJDH sues good samaritans such as the UN or OSF the unintended consequences must be born in mind.
Would OSF again offer free care to the poor and impoverished when the specter of litigation is present ? Remember that cardiac reoperation is so much more difficult and higher risk than the initial surgery.Would a surgeon accept the onus that a failed redo would bring to his reputation and malpractice insurability ? Health care in Haiti is abysmal. Haiti is nearly a failed state. The one good thing for Haiti is that the stigma of HIV-AIDS has now been repudiated and blood donations from Haitian donors are no longer refused outright for the sole reason of being Haitian as it once was.
Thank you, Robert.
I agree with you that OSF has the responsibility to care for their Haitian patients for many obvious reasons.
john
BY POST AUTHOR
Anonymous
says:
No, While I am sorry for any child who suffers it is not OSF or the People of Central Illinois’s responsibility to care for the children of the world. You say yourself, other hospitals will not do this, but you continue to vilify OSF instead of saying “thank you for all you have done in the past”.
ginger
says:
I agree with you so much I want to scream at my phone,yes yes!
Anonymous,
Since Jackson’s death Haitian Hearts has had quite a few OSF-SFMC Haitian patients accepted in other medical centers for repeat heart surgery. But this is not ideal for the patient or the accepting physicians. And when I can’t find a medical center to accept OSF’s patient, they die.
The OSF embargo against these Haitian patients is of course against the Sister’s Mission Statements.
I thanked OSF over and over 15 years ago and Haitian Hearts donated over 1.1 million dollars to OSF-Children’s Hospital of Illinois for their care of Haitian children. This fact is hid from the public.
john
BY POST AUTHOR
61605 RESIDENT
says:
Being that I’m from the 61605 zip code I find your article and the fact that you want OSF to reject the people from that zip code very rude and very offensive!!! Screw you! I’m all for helping people with lesser means than myself but I dont hear you complaining to any other major corporation about how they are not helping the children of Haiti! We all know that the USA is very picky about who they help and who gets the short end of the stick. The people of the 61605 zip code and the children of Haiti are two totally different people! They have absolutely nothing in common EXCEPT for their skin color! If the 05 zip code was majority white there would be no comparison! You wouldn’t want OSF to accept the children of Haiti and deny little Sally or Billy Bob would you? Of course not because they are white and live out in the Dunlap area!! But see that’s the issue because had they assisted the Haitian child and denied little Billy you would be calling for a TOTALLY DIFFERENT LAWSUIT!! So again I say SCREW YOU!! RIP Jackson. Sorry you couldn’t get your heart surgery in time but this lawsuit and this article is BS!
Dear 61605 Resident,
Please.
Calm down.
Big breaths.
Read second to last paragraph of post very slowly.
All is good.
john
BY POST AUTHOR
Comment from Nadia (Jackson’s sister in Haiti)–
Good morning Doctor John, How are you. and how is your family?
i just come to read to history about Jackson, that make me cry, I know if you could keep Jackson on live you would do that. But unfortunatly you couldn’t do that by yourself. Thanks for all you have done for my family and I. We are so blessing to know you, to have you in our life. we love you so much!!!
Nadia
BY POST AUTHOR
More from Nadia–
We wanted to pay final respect to Jackson’s during his funerals but no one helped us. My biggest dream is to go Illinois to see where Jackson has buried to put a flower on his grave. I have no body to help me and make my dream come true, sometimes I wonder that if my brother is really dead. We still suffering after his death.why is OSF refused to give him life. Life is it not more important than any. Appointment to the new world my brother. Where it will have no more crying, or suffering, or sick, or grief and death will be no more. The love Will reign forever.
Nadia Aurelus
says:
All the glory is for God
Comments
Post a Comment