Which is Better: Park Cadot or Cite Soleil--January 2016

 

Park Cadot #1 (Photo by John Carroll–January 27, 2016)

This is an unfair question. I shouldn’t compare the poor against the poor. Both Cadot and Soleil are very terrible places.

Yesterday I examined and treated approximately 100 residents of Camp Cadot #1. I used the “administrative building” which has a roof of coconut fronds, walls made of cloth, and a dirt floor.

The people’s medical problems were  similar to the medical problems in Soleil. The main problems I saw in Cadot (concentrating on pediatrics) were malnutrition, anemia, upper respiratory tract infections, scabies, and impetigo. (There were quite a few hypertensive women.) However, I did not see as much pediatric diarrhea in Cadot as I see during a normal clinic day in Soleil.  And I saw no patients with signs or symptoms of  cholera.

The people in Cadot were very patient and elegant. They sat for hours waiting and listened to my medical advice to each patient. It was kind of like massive group therapy.  On one occasion while I was scooting back in my white plastic chair, one of its legs got caught in a deep hole in the dirt behind me.  As I was toppling over backwards, many hands reached out and grabbed my forearms which prevented me from falling back into the dirt. I was very grateful. But mostly I was humbled.

As the day wore on, the wind picked up from the south and blew clouds of dust through the holes in the cloth walls of the building. We had to put our hands in front of our faces at times to protect our eyes from the swirling dust.  When I ran out of medicine in my cardboard box, clinic was over.

The biggest differences between the two sites in my opinion were not medical. Even though the living conditions in Cadot are horrid, I did not think that the people in Cadot were as stressed as the ones in Soleil. There are no bullets flying in Cadot which may help explain this observation. And it seemed to me that all the people in Cadot were helping each other like a very large family would do under very difficult circumstances. I am sure the people help each other in the different zones of Soleil also, but the unity here in Cadot seemed more cohesive.

Park Cadot #1 (Photo by John Carroll–January 26, 2016)

 

John A. Carroll, MD

www.haitianhearts.org