Haiti Part II Episode I

Cholera has a 50% mortality rate, if untreated. It is a horrible death of profuse vomiting and diarrhea, an undignified, dirty, leper-like death. Families have abandoned those who start showing signs of it, fearful of ending up with the same fate, leaving patients to die alone in the filth of their own feces. Other families have shown great courage and sacrifice in getting their loved ones to the hospital.
It is ridiculously curable; the simplicity of IV fluids is enough to cure the disease. That is all; the lack of clean water and the giving of clean water are both the cause, and the cure.
Part of this contributes to my rage here, watching those who lie, completely undignified, half-naked on our hospital cots with holes ripped open in the middle of the bed, so that they can simply defecate straight into deep buckets under their cots as they are too weak and sick to do their business in private. Rage that something as simple as clean water prevents this disease. Rage that 1 in 6 people on this planet lack access to clean water on a daily basis, and that one-third of our population lack access to basic sanitation.
I serve as the pediatrician here, and have been in charge of the Pediatric Ward (Lopital Kolera pou Timoun in Creole) since my arrival. My charges are the small babies to the teenagers. Everyday, I have witnessed the miracle of Lazarus, again and again, of those who were dead, but have been brought back to life. All for the sake of a few litres of clean water.
My littlest have been but several months old, tiny little critters, to teenagers that have made me laugh when they have gotten well enough that they can complain, over and over again of, "I'm booooorrrrred." (Thank God you're well enough to complain like a regular teenager!). Some have broken my heart in their stories of hunger and want, some have made me laugh with their smiles and their shenanigans (which prove to me how much better they've gotten), some have dozed off in my lap with their velvety chocolate fingers wrapped around my own relatively fat pale ones. This is the face of Jesus that I and my amazing Peds team have resuscitated and maintained and cured, with my nurses colouring and blowing balloons and bubbles for the children. I thank God for my team, for they were amazing women with huge skills and huge hearts, and certainly, though being the pediatrician for the week, I wouldn't have been able to do it without them.