We got to bed late last night after ward surgery – sleeping 14 people in a house on the hospital grounds. Early this morning, we were awakened to violent shaking. It seemed to last a minute, but probably only 15 seconds or so. It felt like someone was shaking me to wake up. Within seconds, hundreds of people throughout the hospital were wailing. The memories of the loss of children and crushing buildings are still so raw for those suffering already, this aftershock was a grim reminder of the pain and suffering they’ve been through over the past week. With a single aftershock, things settled down after an hour. No one is hurt here, but it is still psychologically damaging, and those wounds will take much longer to heal.

We met in house on compound as a medical team; there are 15 of us. Nurses presented plans for assigning responsibility. One nurse is overseeing wounds, another all meds. The departing Ecuadorian rapid response surgical and medical team briefed everyone else on what they would see as next phase. Then we discussed among ourselves the best combination of antibiotics, dependent in part on what supplies we have. We have enough supplies for 2 to 3 days, but more is on the way so no reason to overconserve.

Its 3:30pm and we have been on site for 5 hours. The Baptist Mission Hospital here in Fermathe has two doctors and about 100 beds. Since the hospital is 20 miles north of Port au Prince, it is normally used as a referral hospital. But it is all pretty simple; it did not have even a basic lab until last month; it does not have blood for transfusions; and it is very elementary.

For example, we have one patient being transfused. She had a gastrointestinal bleed last night and her hemoglobin is only two. There is no blood, so she is being transfused directly from the vein of a doctor of the same blood type.

All serious injuries are coming here. The hospital consists of a single functional operating room, two large ward rooms, and a single long hall connecting them all. It has been overwhelmed.

It has been packed all day. You can barely move through the hallway. We quickly toured the facility, made an initial assessment, and then we met with the exhausted limited medical staff.

Findings: Shortage of nurses, no triage going on, no medical records, no place to house postoperative patients. We have an anesthesiologist with us, but we lack basic anesthesia equipment.

Patients: All ages, mainly fractures, the wounds that are now 6 days old are all infected. There is a shortage of pins and plates to stabilize the wounds.

I’m in a meeting now with 6 Samaritan’s Purse members and hospital leadership addressing the issues above.

More later. We need to unload the antibiotics.

Traveling to Haiti today on Medical Mission

The medical need in Haiti is desperate — in particular for surgeons. Having responded in this capacity just after the tsunami in Sri Lanka and four days after the levees broke following Katrina, I decided to join fellow physicians from Samaritans purse in Haiti.

On Sunday I spent the morning at Centennial Medical Center in Nashville going through their basement, picking out medical supplies most notably antibiotics and intravenous fluids, they generously provided for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti.

Last night I loaded up the boxes with Karyn, and then with the help of the agents at Delta, got the ten heavy boxes of supplies down to southern Florida. Our medical team of ten departed for Haiti at 6am this morning.

Haiti is different than the last 2 disasters I responded to. In the tsunami and Katrina, most died quickly of drowning. In Haiti most of the injuries are due to the crush of the collapse of structures, with broken bones common. Infection and shock (low blood volume) set in quickly, thus the need for fluids and antibiotics.

Centennial has offered a great supply, but we need more. Hopefully in the next couple of days we can get a plane load into the hospital there to meet this critical need.

As I can, I will be blogging daily to report what is happening on the ground. I invite you to visit www.billfrist.com and www.hopethroughhealinghands.org to learn more about the disaster of Haiti over the course of the next week.

-Dr. Bill Frist

The first half of his op-ed is below. You can read the full piece on the Roll Call site.

In most years, Senate deliberations over a nomination for administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, which leads American efforts to fight poverty and disease in the developing world, would pass without note.

Bill Frist, Special to Roll Call This year is different. American efforts to improve the lives of the world’s poorest people have never been so important. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted last week to refer the nomination of Dr. Rajiv Shah for USAID administrator to the floor for a full vote, which is expected soon. Dr. Shah should be confirmed without delay for three key reasons.

First, successful outcomes to our most pressing national security challenges, including the war in Afghanistan and instability in Pakistan, depend just as much on our ability to provide health services and economic opportunity to struggling people as on our combat operations or diplomatic efforts. Both President Barack Obama’s new Afghanistan strategy and the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Pakistan aid package make substantial new commitments based on this idea.

Second, the global fights against HIV/AIDS and other deadly diseases have reached a turning point. U.S.-led programs such as former President George W. Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, have helped poor families and communities move from a moment of crisis toward a moment of opportunity. We need to work twice as hard to maintain and build on this progress.

Third, the Obama administration and bipartisan Congressional leaders are in the midst of a transformative debate about how to make U.S. foreign assistance more effective and accountable. The unprecedented momentum in this debate is on the side of those who believe we need a new development strategy and a more efficient foreign assistance system that produces greater returns for recipients and taxpayers alike.

Read former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s full op-ed here.

We’ll have more on the G20 Summit soon, including some on the ground reports from Pittsburgh. Excerpts from Senator Frist’s op-ed below, full piece here.

When world leaders chart a course toward a more prosperous future at next week’s G-20 summit, Pittsburgh can inspire in more ways than one.

The city built on steel has renewed its shine as a center for research and technology and become a model for economic comeback. When this recession recedes, Pittsburgh is poised to jump far ahead of cities where “rust belt” still rings true.

But progress is not measured solely in economic terms. Presidents and prime ministers should note a different kind of progress that Pittsburgh pursued and achieved in the years it was still building its first boom. This kind of progress has yet to reach many parts of the planet, but, in the interests of all, must.

Sustainable recovery and long-term economic growth depend on improving the well-being of the world’s most vulnerable people and ensuring they, too, participate in recovery. To that end, improving the health of children and mothers is fundamental.

G-20 leaders also have a key opportunity to promote policies offering a healthy start to the world’s most vulnerable children. In L’Aquila, the eight leading industrialized nations took an important step in this direction. That summit’s official declaration recognized the importance of improving maternal, child and newborn health and how (90 years after Pittsburgh was told so) effective measures to prevent child deaths are proven and available now.

But world leaders passed on committing resources or introducing a mechanism to spur concrete action to help poor countries. Now it’s time they tell developing countries: If you produce a viable plan to reduce child deaths, we will not allow you to fail for lack of resources.

-Chris Scott

Senator Frist also has an op-ed in today’s Washington Times on the state of Africa’s children which you can read here.

You can check out the clip here, partial transcript below:

These deaths are preventable, and it’s cheap and we know how to do that. And people think of malaria and HIV and tuberculosis– all very serious– but the number one disease is cardiovascular disease. And we must continue to focus on malaria and bed nets, but simply clean water can go further in saving lives inexpensively around the world.

-Chris Scott

Excerpts below, full piece here:

Economists would argue that one of the surest ways out of poverty is for people to increase their incomes to take care of themselves and their families. For incomes to rise, developing economies must work to generate growth opportunities through trade and commerce, reliable infrastructure, and sound policies that create and sustain jobs for the poor.

When the poor are stricken by disease and weak health, they are unable to take advantage of these opportunities. Rather than climbing out of poverty, they fall deeper into it. It’s clear that economic development and human development are intertwined. Growth needs a healthy workforce. The productivity and development of communities – and their ability to participate in the global economy – rely on the physical well-being of citizens to innovate, build, harvest, and work. Sustaining such productivity requires children to learn in school, not fall behind because they are too sick to concentrate. By building healthier, hopeful, and productive communities, we build safer and more secure societies that can alleviate global poverty and contribute to global prosperity. When communities are productive and thriving they don’t become breeding grounds for dangerous extremism.

We need to rethink America’s global health diplomacy within this context […]

-Chris Scott

The Declaration on U.S. Policy and the Global Challenge of Water makes the case that water is a critical resource “that will become even more critical in the future.” It also presents evidence that “water is intricately linked to the stability and security of communities and nations, human health, education, economic prosperity, humanitarian relief, and stewardship of the physical environment” and that “water is vital to other key resources essential to the human condition, most notably agriculture and energy.”

Endorsed by over 35 leaders from business, government, and academia, the Declaration recommends the adoption of seven action steps:

1. The new U.S. president should spearhead a comprehensive and sustained global campaign to address the global challenge of water.
2. The president should develop an integrated strategy for national action on the global water campaign.
3. The president should appoint a special high-level representative to lead implementation of the U.S. global water campaign.
4. The special representative should be directly reinforced by a core team to help guide implementation of the water campaign, in addition to expanded capacities at the Department of State at the behest of the special representative.
5. The proposed U.S. campaign should be commensurate with the magnitude of the challenge—which means a significant increase in the amount and duration of resources committed under the campaign.
6. The U.S. government should attempt to energize and catalyze international efforts.
7. The U.S. government should reinforce public/private-sector partnerships.

You can read and sign the water declaration and watch the declaration release online.

-Rosie Stafford, ONE

In an editorial at CNN.com today, Senator Bill Frist provides some analysis and commentary on President Bush’s work in the fight against HIV/AIDS during his 8 years in office. He also writes about the trip he took to Rwanda this summer with ONE and how that impacted his own personal support of global AIDS relief efforts.

Excerpts below, full piece here

I was in the first row in the House chamber when three quarters through his State of the Union address, the president boldly said: “I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years … to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean” and “lead the world in sparing innocent people from a plague of nature.”

And lead the world we did. No president in history had made such a commitment against a single disease. Those words and the action that followed meant that instead of another 30 million people dying from HIV infections, maybe just another 20 million will.

…Six months ago, Tom Daschle, Mike Huckabee, John Podesta, Cindy McCain and I (yes, we five of different persuasions do work together!) went to Rwanda on a fact-finding trip.

Our visits with villagers all over the country opened our eyes to how Bush’s five-year, $1.2 billion effort to combat malaria has provided 4 million insecticide-treated bed nets and 7 million life-saving drug therapies to vulnerable people. Yes, George Bush the healer.

Future historians will also note what today’s pundits ignore: total US government development aid to Africa quadrupled from $1.3 billion in 2001 to more than $5 billion in 2008. What’s more, the Bush administration doubled foreign aid worldwide over the past eight years. You have to go back to the Truman years to match that.

And the president revolutionized the way we give aid with the creation of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, now active in 35 countries. This $6.7 billion public-private partnership for the first time ties aid to accountability based on a country’s governing well, fighting corruption and commitment to economic freedoms.

-Chris Scott

Jenny Dyer of Hope Through Healing Hands just passed along this great blog post from Senator Bill Frist. Check it out!

We had a fantastic event on Saturday morning with the women of Grace Chapel Church here in Leipers Fork, TN. What an amazing bunch of women!

A few months ago, my good friend Reese Smith introduced the Knit One, Save One Campaign, a national grassroots effort launched by the global humanitarian organization Save the Children and the Warm Up America Foundation, to his wife, Emily, an avid knitter and member of the “Knitting with Grace” club at the church. The initiative aims to draw attention to the 4 million newborns that die each year in the first month of life in the developing world. Participants are asked to make a baby cap, and are also encouraged to write a personal note to President-elect Barack Obama urging him to lead the way to save millions of babies globally.

Emily Smith, Beth Ann Bright, Mary Bit Mahaffey and a number of other women in the group committed to 100 caps. And, like the story of the loaves and the fishes, they just multiplied exponentially! Saturday, the “Knitting with Grace” club presented me with over 500 knitted caps and over 500 caps made by machine. Over 1000 caps!

These little caps will each be shipped, along with thousands from all 50 states to pregnant women and new moms and their babies in Save the Children’s programs in Africa and Asia. Hypothermia is a contributing cause of death for newborns, especially small babies unable to maintain their body temperature. To keep infants safe and warm, these little caps will be given for them to wear along with helpful advice to moms about hygiene and breastfeeding. These little caps will be a key component of a life saving package.

It was so exciting to see the amazing work these women had done. Thank you Grace Chapel Church for your initiative, advocacy, awareness-raising, and hard work for the least of these.

Read more about the campaign, and see how many caps Americans have made. The deadline for the project has been extended to January 31st. Let us know if you would like to be involved!

Best,

Senator Bill Frist, M.D.

P.S. Go to Hope through Healing Hands for more information on this project and other simple things you can do to save lives.