Searching for healing: Inside one of the last hospitals in Haiti’s capital | Health News

The most peaceful area of ​​all the hospital was a small terrace in its center, where patients rested on benches under a wooden pagoda. Nearby, a small colorful obstacle course helped survivors find their mobility after surgery and other intensive treatments.

This is where we met Alexandro, four years old and his mother, Youseline Philisma.

Alexandro had only one month when an armed group set fire to the camp of displaced people where they lived. He was torn from the flames, alive but seriously burned.

Since then, you have taken it to the tabarrian burning unit – the only one on the left in the country.

“When I come to the hospital, it’s another world. Everyone understands my little one. Everyone gives us a lot of love,” she told us.

Alexandro will need custody of the burning unit for the rest of his life. Surgeon Donald Jacques Severe is among the doctors who treat him.

Severe could leave the country. His wife and children have already done so, leaving four years ago for the United States. Armed fighters had invaded their house. Severe himself has a visa to live in Canada. But so far, he has not left.

His colleague Surgeon, Xavier Kernizan, tried to explain the sense of duty that he and severe share.

“We know that if we are not here, someone will have trouble,” said Kernizan.

“Personally, we are close to professional exhaustion. Sometimes we are close to depression. But there is also this satisfactory feeling of having helped to improve someone’s daily life, to offer someone some hope in their darkest moments.”

But if the security situation continues to deteriorate, it is impossible to know if the Tabarre hospital will survive.

On April 11, my documentary team and I left the hospital doors for the first time in a week. We are heading to Petion-Ville, one of the rare places in Port-au-Prince still under the control of the government.

There, we crossed a football field near the Karibe hotel, where a helicopter of the World Food Program takes up passengers. This is the only way to get out of the capital right now.

We climbed into the helicopter, its rotors began their unsubscription and the Haitian capital began to become smaller as we were in the air, sailing above the bubble of violence below. I remember feeling relief.

The hospital staff stayed behind. They have no intention of leaving.