A story from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Steve and Ruth Hersey are teachers in Haiti. Ruth sent me a prayer request about an expectant mother (A friend or hers). Her baby was in trouble...
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Hello,First, let me say to keep praying for Odanie and for Beni, her baby (it means blessed, and he is :-)). Thank you for all your prayers so far.
I told you that we got a call that they were sending him to General Hospital because he had respiratory problems. This is a terrible place to be sent, and we were going to do everything in our power to keep him out of there. So we called around and tried to set stuff up, and finally they said they were taking him to St. Francois de Sales, which is right down the road from General Hospital, so we dropped the kids off with friends and took off down there. General Hospital will take people who can't pay but St. Francois won't, so we were going to just go pay. On the way there, the ambulance stopped at General Hospital, and they were told there wasn't room for any more babies there.
When we got to St. Francois I called Odanie's sister, Ercilia, who was accompanying the baby, and she said they had just arrived too. So we rushed in and she was just getting out of the ambulance. The baby was wrapped in a towel and she was holding his feeding tube up in the air. We went straight over to the window and asked where we should go. The woman said that we couldn't stay there because they had no doctor. (What? You thought they should have a doctor at the hospital? What an idea!) She said we should go across the street to the Hopital Francais, so we went out and jumped in the car and went over there. (The ambulance had left, not waiting to make sure the baby was OK at all.)
When we got to the Hopital Francais, they were sympathetic but said they didn't have an emergency room or an incubator, so we couldn't stay there. The nurse looked at the baby's papers from the hospital where he was born and they said "bebe precieux" - precious baby. She said we should go as fast as we could to another hospital, which she named. We started off to that hospital but on the way I called a friend who is an RN and asked him where we should go and then we followed his instructions. It's a brand new hospital with all the facilities. When we got there, there was a doctor, which was an improvement on previous places, but they had no incubator. The doctor examined the baby. This was the first time I had had a good look at him out of his towel. He looks quite healthy and his feet and hands and lips are pink. He has a good startle reflex and he acts just like a newborn is supposed to act. The doctor said he couldn't stay there, though, so he wrote a letter and called a doctor to meet us at a different hospital.When we got there, after asking directions of many people and taking many wrong turns, we climbed up to the third floor. We went to the desk and told them that a doctor was meeting us there and taking charge of the baby. She said, no, that's not how it works. The hospital takes charge of the baby, the doctor just works at the hospital. Well, excuse me for messing up your procedure, but here we are with a baby that needs care. So they fooled around for a bit, tried to get us to pay for a room, called the doctor, and finally after twenty minutes or so said, no, they couldn't take the baby because he wasn't born there (which I would guess they knew when we first walked in).
We headed across town to go to yet one more hospital (Petits Freres et Soeurs, which used to be in Petionville but now is in Damien), but on the way the doctor from the first hospital, the Doctors Without Borders one where the baby was born, called and said he could come back to their hospital since we had tried others and not been accepted. (Later we found out that John Ackerman had called someone who works out there at Petits Freres et Soeurs and was told that they don't take premies, anyway.) So we took Beni back there and dropped him off. I tried to pay money but nobody would take the money - that hospital is free.I didn't understand what had just happened. If they take care of babies for free, and they were going to take this one, then what was all that about, making us drive all over the city being rejected from hospital after hospital? It's almost like a little game. I'm very thankful for the care they are giving Beni, though.
Ercilia thanked me for all we had done and I said, "We didn't do anything, just drove around and came back to where we started from."
She said, "Well, that's not your fault - it's the country."
I thought I knew what it was like to have a baby in this country but clearly I was wrong. It was so sad to me to see Beni, while labeled as a "precious baby," getting turned away by hospital after hospital. And that's what happens to a baby who is loved and wanted and whose mother has a job and people who care about her!
I went up and saw Odanie and she is exhausted and worried about her baby but otherwise OK. Later, after we got home, she called and went on and on about how grateful she is to God (after her ordeal of the past week, no complaining) and how He had answered her prayers. She also said that Ercilia had told her that I cried when one of the hospitals rejected Beni and that had touched her so much. I am blown away by her attitude after all she has been through and I feel ashamed of myself for all the complaining I do. She came to see me after I had Sebastian and saw my private air-conditioned room, and now I've seen the hospital she was so grateful for, with two dozen women laboring in the same room, and no privacy at all, not even a curtain. That hospital delivers a thousand babies a month, and it's one of the best places to deliver in this city.So, as so many times in this country, we did the best we knew to do and it ended up making absolutely no difference and in fact, maybe making things worse (no doubt it wasn't great for him to be driven all over town like that). Please keep praying for Odanie and Beni and that both of them will get the care they need. I won't be happy until both of them are home and I can keep an eye on them.
Ruth
If you want to cantact Ruth please email me at: mattenleys@mercyleague.org
