Photo of a hospital medicine cabinet in Haiti

This is a photo of the medicine cabinet at a volunteer-run hospital in Port-au-Prince. All the drugs are donated, and because there is no organized system of distributing meds, the doctors and nurses simply take them off these shelves as deemed necessary. My friend Jenny just spent a few weeks there doing triage work and took this photo.

• [hindlist]

  This is not correct as this is something that can make or break lives of the people. There should be some systematic way out for this.

• [Direct Relief]

  The situation has been challenging in Haiti, to say the least. We just had a series of meetings with the country’s Director of Pharmacy to suggest some controls that could be put in place. We run SAP, which has been a huge help in delivering medical supplies and pharmaceuticals to Haiti ($45 million so far), because the packing lists are detailed down to the lot number that they clear customs pretty fast.

  From what our guys in Haiti have seen, these temporary facilities have been so overwhelmed with patients that managing supplies is difficult. Not sure what hospital this is, but we established a warehouse in Haiti so we could make small, tailored deliveries to health facilities we vetted to replenish their supplies. There’s a ton of background on our work in Haiti on our site, http://www.DirectRelief.org, if you want to learn more. It’s nurses like Jenny who are making a huge difference in Haiti, working in tough conditions to help the people who have suffered so much. Kudos to her!

• [eyeruh]

  For point of reference, the average American pharmacy would have roughly 15 shelves for medications with names beginning with “A” through “E”, not just one.

• [[No Heroes]]

  This link is for the ‘Haiti’ page of Foreign Policy’s ‘Postcards From Hell’, a collection of photographs corresponding to their Failed States Index.

  http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/21/postcards_from_hell?page=0,11

• [sarafenix]

  This link is to a blog written by a young woman who worked as a news anchor while she attended nursing school. As a nurse, she quit her newscaster job and went to Haiti to assist in the medical needs of the people there. Her blog only slightly reflects what a wonderful young woman she truly is.

  http://tsjitter.blogspot.com/

  • [Anonymous]

    The american system is overkill though. You don’t need 15 shelves keeping dangerously high dosages of tylenol away from the dying patients in a disaster area. Really the only thing that should be locked up is opiates.

    Foreign aid pours into the country, nobody’s tracking bottles of pills. Making them lock them up just inconveniences workers while anyone seriously out to steal drugs could likely receive entire shipments.

    • [eyeruh]

      I wasn’t suggesting that they should be keeping more pills locked up. I *am* suggesting that the doctors there would probably love access to a wider range of medications. Sure, they don’t need everything in an American pharmacy but that’s not really the point.

• [Anonymous]

  To me this looks like a very well organized hospital:
  -It’s organized alphabetically, which (to me) looks like the most effective way to quickly find the needed medicine.
  -It’s not over-organized. They have what they need, not more.
  -They manage there stock very well, nothing has run out.
  -They don’t give patients more drugs than needed, even if that would mean some half packages remaining. (resisting the lobbying from corrupt manufacturers)
  -Above all, they have a very organized staff that puts everything back in it’s place, instead of making there colleagues live miserable. These people clearly care about there job.
  If I had to choose, these are the people I would want to be treated by.
  Even if I never end up in Haiti, I appreciate all there good work.

• [kpkpkp]

  Eddie would have that place cleaned up in no time:
  http://www.sho.com/site/nursejackie/characters.do?character=eddie