I am sure by now that you are  aware of the terrible events that have taken place in Haiti.  Tabu “Thick N’ Sassy” Online Magazine is teaming up with the American Red Cross and the Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti foundation to help ensure the victims of Haiti are receiving the help they so desperately need and deserve. We urge you to please donate anything that you can by way of text or direct online payments using any credit card.  Thank You.

Written by George Ledbetter

The Jan. 12 earthquake that hit Port-au-Prince, Haiti, has nearly overwhelmed an already strained medical system, and will affect the entire island nation for years. Those are some of the observations that Chadron native Lara Keepers brought back from a week long medical mission trip to Haiti at the end of January.

Keepers, a registered nurse who works at Regional West Medical Center in Scottsbluff, traveled to Haiti with a 22-member team under the auspices of the Northwest Haiti Christian Mission (NWHCM). Eight of the team members were from Scottsbluff.

They went to St. Louis Du Nord, a town in northern Haiti where NWHCM has a clinic. The organization has been working in Haiti since 1979. Keepers was on her second trip with the group, which was already providing surgical care there twice a year.

Although St. Louis Du Nord wasn’t hit by the earthquake, the spill over effect was dramatic, Keepers said. “Thousands of people have been displaced. Many are heading out of Port au Prince, heading to wherever they have family,” she said. “Tent cities and shanty towns are popping up all over the country.”

The nation has little ability to take care of medical problems resulting from the earthquake and its aftermath, according to Keepers.

“Before the earthquake, people already waited months for basic medical care. Now, this incredible mass of trauma has been thrust on an already ill prepared medical system,” she said. “The earthquake victims are being treated first, obviously, and this is overwhelming all the medical care of the country.”

Organizations like NWHCM “try to catch the overflow,” of patients in the strained medical system, said Keepers.

During the week that the Keepers was in Haiti, her team did 25 major surgeries, handled 18 long-long term care patients and treated over 200 people for wounds and other less serious conditions. About 20 of the patients had injuries directly related to the earthquake, she said. Part of the team remained a second week and handled similar numbers of patients in that period.

Although the situation was grim Keepers said she was amazed by the “incredible resilience of the Haitian people.”

“They are strong, stoic, hard working, kind people. I rarely hear a Haitian complain,” she said. “They are grateful for what little they receive. Watching someone who has just had surgery be given nothing more than Tylenol for pain and not only not complain, but say ‘Thank you’ and then head out the door to take an hour long, crowded, bumpy tap-tap ride home is amazing to me.”

Keepers said she is very grateful for the donations made through the NWHCM website that helped pay the cost of her trip to Haiti. “ It was a huge relief to come home and not have to worry about paying off the rest of the trip,” she said.

“I don’t get a list of everyone who donated,,,so I cannot send notes to everyone. But I do want to say thanks to all who donated,” she said. “The trip itself was wonderful, eye opening, extremely hard work, but definitely worth it.”