Dear family and friends,
As I write these words, the violent rule of gangs in Port au Prince in increasing, and reaching our neighborhood, which is also the neighborhood of US Embassy.The Embassy is, during these very days, evacuating all non-emergency personnel.
The effect on us is that our hospital now receives many warlike trauma and gunshot injuries, especially since the specialty hospital nearby that was managing them closed, precisely because of armed attack on their hospital. We cannot get surgeons to come to our area. It is a red zone. And like many hospitals in Port au Prince, we cannot even keep the competent people we already have, since many are fleeing Haiti to raise their families in a safer country. We are not capable of managing high level trauma. It means we stabilize the gunshot injured as best as we can and transfer them to a private surgery center at our expense, for which we have no budget but must act to save lives. We are facing the worse crisis we have ever faced in 34 years of dedicated mission here, and the consequences are not only the disintegration of a nation and all the institutions that constitute civilization, but the people are floundering in a tsunami of despair. The dangerous sickness of despair surrounds us like a violent sea in a hurricane. And yet amid all of this, there was Raphael.