Dance Therapy

If only recovery could be as easy as a Lady Gaga song: "just dance, gonna be okay!" As a form of physical therapy, patients came outside and the universal language of song and dance brought the best out of the Hatian earthquake victims and the volunteers. For many patients this was the first time venturing out of the hospital setting to let lose and dance off some of the stress from an earthquake that left many learning to live and walk in new circumstances.

Fundraiser Update From Last Night!

Thanks to everyone who came out on a rainy Tuesday night in Boston to the YOYOYO 90's JAM: Heal The World Edition! We raised $437 as a result of your generosity! A big shout out to Shane Flanagan, Cassidy's brother for all his work with our site and helping with donations at the door @Middlesexlounge, Misch from Misch Mash and Colleen for their support (they just got back from HSC in Haiti!), Chris, who went to high school in Haiti if I remember correctly, and is returning back to help his father and his people in May or April; also to Chris's friend Jack Alexandre (pictured w/ me) who runs the 1804 Foundation out of Boston (he was blown away that we were doing this as he had just been to the hospital as well); Eli and Charlie of Soul Clap for their big hearts and partnering with us on short notice - and once again proving they are the most consistently entertaining djs in Boston; and big ups to VJs Evan Lukash (v.Ka$h) and Catherine Sauer for the mind-blowing 90's throwback visuals, including a classic clip of Full House's Jodie Sweetin doing the running man; and to Nolan of Middlesex lounge for letting us film; my friends Aaron Stackhouse and Dinna Yap who are busy raising money for their own great cause this Thursday, 6:30-8:30pm at Boston Bowl in Dorchester. And a big thank you to DJ • Producer • Designer Randy Deshaies for donating his time and ink for some 100 beds posters.. Ok enough patting on the back... there is still so much work to do! And from what Jack Alexandre showed me on a facebook post, we as concerned world citizens only know 1/10th of the damage and devastation.. I will follow up with him shortly.. ALSO, look for a video from the fundraiser last night and nicer pics of the party courtesy of really cool boston event photographer Steve Osemwenkae, so check back soon!

Dance Your Socks Off!

Tonight is our first event for the campaign! We are so excited that Boston-based Soul Clap has chosen the 100 Beds for Haiti as their featured charity for "YoYoYo 90's Jam: Heal the World Edition". The monthly throwback dance party and DJ set will be held at the Middlesex Lounge in Cambridge, Mass (315 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, 617.868.6739) starting at 9pm tonight. 100 Beds for Haiti team members Daren and Shane will be on hand and collecting donations at the door, so look out for them. Remember this isn't just about dancing but meeting our goal to send 100 hospital beds to HSC!

If you are wondering who exactly Soul Clap is and what a 90's jam entails, well, Stuff Boston said it best:

"Between failed attempts to make “The Rachel” work on our locks and unrequited crushes on Luke Perry, let’s just say the ’90s were an awkward time for many of us. But damn did the decade have some danceable music — otherwise the YoYoYo ’90s Dance Jam, the monthly throwback bash from the boys of Soul Clap, wouldn’t still be going strong almost five years after its founding."

Soul Clap is well known for their productions, remixes, creative DJ sets and some of Boston's best dance music events. Each summer they organize Dancing On The Charles (one of Urb Magazine's six best outdoor parties in the Us) and every Wednesday they host Midweek Techno (Boston's longest running techno night). You can also listen to their live broadcasts on The Adventures of Soul Clap Podcast. In other words, these guys know how to make any wall flower get up and move (or should I say, groove!).

Check out a few of Soul Clap's remixes on their site, and you will certainly be ready to show us your best moves tonight! Bring your friends, your best 90's look (ripped jeans- check, baby doll dress- check, check!), and support for 100 Beds for Haiti!

Joining the team and searching for beds

Dear blog,
This is my first blog post ever! My virgin attempt to join the wave of the new media future! Thought I'd break the ice by filling you in on my recent activities this week related to this exciting new fund raising campaign. But wait - first I want to mention how excited I am to be part of this project. When I walked into the first advisory committee meeting on Feb 15th for 100 Beds for Haiti campaign I felt instantly a little tingle of excitement - all these unknown, bright, caring faces - who are these people that Judy has brought together under the auspices of actually being proactive in the face of such a profound humanitarian crises? Before that I was moping around the apartment, procrastinating writing my thesis (which is focused on empowerment and hand washing education in Haiti) and wracking my brain trying to make sense of the whole thing still weeks - months later. I wondered why I felt so powerless to do anything beyond sending money to my friends there and cultivating conversations about what made Haiti so vulnerable in the first place. At any rate, blogs are supposed to be short I think. So the invitation to join this campaign, once I met the organizers, was a total wake up call and I am really, truly thrilled to be part of this. Selfishly, I expect to learn, mostly from these other people on the campaign, and from this experience getting to watch (and participate in) a fund-raising initiative as it unfolds from the very moment of conception.

So to update on my latest task: As you may have noticed on our website, we have not posted any dollar amount attached to a single bed. This is because we're researching and negotiating ways to reduce the cost of our beds and of the shipment to Haiti. Working at Columbia Medical Center, I offered to do some phone inquiries to see if I could reach the person at Presbyterian Hospital who is in charge of buying beds. Its just the kind of thing I like to do: sifting through the sands of bureaucracy, patiently waiting as the receptionist bounces me from one department to the next, learning the right words to say like "procurement" and "capital purchase." Finally last week, after a full two weeks leaving messages with at least ten different people, I hear back from one of them who is my gateway/breakthrough - he gives me names of bed vendors they work with reps, contacts, and a reference to the guy at NY Presbyterian who managed the bed replacement scheme of hundreds of beds at the hospital recently. I have a feeling this guy is my "key informant" as we say in health promotion. He and I have been playing phone tag but I'm narrowing in. Will let you know, blog, stay tuned for more...

Dispatch from Hôpital Sacré Coeur: Dr. Brian Liddy and the KAPHLUMPHH!!

Dr. Brian Liddy, an anesthesiologist originally from California who now works in York, Maine recently spent a few weeks as a volunteer with Hôpital Sacré Coeur (HSC) after the devastating earthquake struck Port-au-Prince. Dr. Liddy documented his experiences working in Haiti and HSC through his own blog An Anesthesiologist's Journey to Sacre Coeur hospital in Milot, Haiti and the 100 Beds for Haiti Campaign recently caught up with him to ask him more about his experience working on the ground and to get his perspective on why the 100 Beds for Haiti Campaign is important for the short-term benefits and the overall long-term recovery efforts to rebuild Haiti.

100 Beds For Haiti (100 Beds): You're an anesthesiologist working at York Hospital in Southern Maine; what brought you to CRUDEM and Hôpital Sacré Coeur (HSC)?

Dr. Liddy (Dr. L): I have always been interested in travel to developing countries and international medicine. I have travelled extensively in Mexico, Costa Rica and Turkey. I was evaluating several places to go for my next Medical volunteer trip when the Haitian earthquake happened. I knew right away that I had to offer my services to the Haitians. For a disaster of that magnitude to happen to a country with no existing infrastructure? What a catastrophe. I saw all the news clips coming in and the suffering I observed in the Haitian people really affected me on a professional and on a human level.

I was connected with CRUDEM/Hôpital Sacré Coeur through a connection at the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA). I felt like my skills would be particularly useful there because they had operating rooms that were up and running. Thus, I could do clinical anesthesia and spread out their workload a little bit. I was able to get 2 weeks off from work thanks to my colleagues and I went down.

100 Beds: Have you ever done humanitarian or disaster relief work before?

Dr. L: I spent 5 weeks traveling around rural Turkey about ten years ago as an ER physician. I helped teach the Turkish residents and Medical Students in eight or so different hospitals. It was a great experience.

I have never done disaster relief on the scale that I found in Haiti. I’m not sure many medical providers have!

100 Beds: What were some of your first impressions when you arrived in Milot and HSC?

Dr. L: Milot was actually much smaller than I expected. It was a very tight-knit, “homey” sort of community. Everyone was very welcoming in Milot. It was much cleaner than Cap Haitien, the city I flew into. Milot actually had some paved streets, a rarity in Haiti.



The first thing that really struck me about HSC when I arrived was how ORGANIZED the place was! I was expecting chaos. After all, they had to expand from a 65 patient bed hospital to treating over 400+ in two weeks! The OR area had been converted from 3 to 5 working OR/procedure areas. I was expecting I would be doing surgeries outside in tents! The tents for patients had already been set up. The volunteer area had been expanded to hold all the extra volunteers. It was very impressive. It was a real, functional hospital in the middle of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

100 Beds: Before you left for Haiti you set up your own blog reporting your own experiences and observations working at HSC. It was really moving to read your different entries starting a few days before you left to your return back to the U.S. You also took quite a few photos of different patients both recovering and during surgery. What was it like to document your own experience on the ground?

Dr. L: Thanks! I really enjoyed writing the blog. It helped me decompress after the long, stressful days away from my family. I wanted to share my own experiences down there to give people a sense about what it was really like to work there. Most of what people see of Haiti on CNN or the other news channels definitely has a “spin” on it. The news networks are in the business of attracting viewers so they are going to find the most shocking or awe-inspiring stories to report on. They aren’t going to talk about the different types of rice and beans the volunteers share with the patients and such... or the roosters that keep the volunteers up all night (laughing).

The kids loved having their pictures taken. Most of the pictures I took of the kids were with cards that my kids’ classes made for them. They LOVED those cards! Even the teens. They were SO
into those cards!




100 Beds: On average, how many patients did you see a day and about how many surgeries were able to be performed each day?

Dr. L: Wow. That’s hard to figure but I would say in an average day I personally did between five and eight cases. The OR was doing at least 30 cases a day. I was there late February and they had done upwards of 800 cases for 2010. Last year they did 1200 cases in the entire year.

100 Beds: As a doctor working in a hospital in the U.S. with access to some pretty advanced technology, how were you able to adapt to the technology available to you at HSC? What were some of the most challenging aspect of diagnosing patients?

Dr. L: In anesthesiology, the main concern was safety. We tried to keep the anesthetics as safe as possible for the patients. Since we did not have access to the most modern anesthesia machines, we tried to do regional anesthesia (spinals and nerve blocks) as much as possible. Regional is pretty “low-tech” : although one of the Duke/Raleigh anesthesiologists that came down brought his own ultrasound for nerve blocks. That was pretty slick! (laughing)


The thing I found the most challenging was not being able to get ( or find) lab results on my patients. I knew they were ordered, but I couldn’t ever, for the life of me, find them. That tends to make things challenging. Your patient is hypotensive and tachycardic. Is it a result of the spinal or is it because their Hemoglobin 4? (Normal is 15)

100 Beds: You mention that Phillips Electronic donated a "fluoroscopy unit for 'real-time' X-rays in the operating room". What did this mean for the OR?

Dr. L: That was huge. We had the only fluoroscopy machine in all of Haiti! A fluoroscopy machine lets the surgeon see immediate X-ray images intra-operatively. When all the original, emergency repairs took place this was not available to the surgeons. As a result, the orthopedists were taking their “best educated guesses” as to how the bones would line up best.

Once they got the fluoro machine they could re-do the repairs with much better fixation and alignment for long term recovery. We were getting 4-5 patients flown in daily from all over Haiti to have their fracture fixations revised. The orthopedic team was absolutely pummeled when I was there.

100 Beds: You describe one patient, a 17-year old boy who among other injuries had a fractured skull with parts of the skull effectively dead from infection, and needed to be removed to prevent an even more serious infection like meningitis. The decision to operate was a complicated one because this particular piece of the skull rested over a large vein that drains blood from the brain (so any sort of tear could cause immediate death) and you had only one unit of blood that you were unable to test for HIV. How did you and your team evaluate this case, including the mitigating circumstances, and chose to operate?

Dr. L: Yeah, that was a tough one. He was the nicest kid too. He was an orphan but had such a great attitude about everything.


With him it came down to: without the surgery, he was certainly going to die from an extension on the infection intra-cerebrally. There was a much smaller risk of tearing his sagittal sinus and an even smaller risk of contracting HIV from the blood transfusion. So, even though the surgery and transfusion would entail some risk, “gonna die” trumps “slight risk of dying” to put it bluntly. So we elected to proceed. Luckily, he did fine and there were no complications.

100 Beds: Haiti has one of the world's highest HIV rates, did you find this to be an added challenge when treating patients?

Dr. L: We practice universal precautions with all our patients and assume “everyone could have HIV” in the US. So it didn’t feel any different in Haiti, although I must confess I was I bit more wary down there. The diseases I was more concerned about were malaria and tuberculosis (TB). Several volunteers I talked with contracted malaria on previous visits. That didn’t sound the least bit fun.

TB runs rampant in Haiti and it is, in fact, one of the leading infectious causes of death in Haiti. We took care of numerous patients with TB and probably many more that are undiagnosed. HIV is relatively hard to catch, TB is relatively easy to catch.

100 Beds: One passage from your blog struck me as particularly moving and in keeping with our 100 Beds for Haiti Campaign, I found extremely relevant:

“It is now 10 PM and having just transported our last patient of the day on an army stretcher, across the dirt road, in the rain, to his current home in Tent #5 where he will spend the night with 50 other patients, I’m going to pass out on my own cot. zzzzzzzzzzzzz”

HSC has about 73 patient hospital beds, and is treating well over 300 patients. Many of these patients are recovering in the Tent City set up across the road from the hospital, sleeping on cots; and, even you were sleeping on your own cot! Can you describe your response to the condition you were working and living in?

Dr. L: Ha ha. Yeah, I was pretty tired when I wrote that. We all realized that when we were heading down there, it was not going to be “Club-Med” and our accommodations were going to be somewhat spartan. We weren’t getting the best sleep in the world but none of us were complaining. We knew it was as bad if not worse for the patients. That patient that I described just had a revision of his lower leg external fixation device. So Sam, a medical student and I carried him across the street in the pouring rain and we were all soaked. The patient plopped himself down on his cot, KAPHLUMPHH!! He and his family thanked us profusely. All the other patients were peering out from their sheets to see what all the commotion was. I couldn’t help think, “I have absolutely nothing to complain about”. But, I really think he would have benefited from a real hospital bed. The cots are far from the least comfortable thing to sleep on (that prize goes to the luggage compartment floor in a Czech second class train) but post fracture fixation patients do require a bit of malleability in their resting quarters. They really need their fractures elevated and such.

100 Beds: Haiti has a long way to go on its own road to recovery but from your own experience and observations what does an increase in support and donations from professionals volunteering their time and skills to monetary donations mean in terms of immediate positive changes?

Dr. L: Haiti is totally dependent, at this point, on foreign aid and organizations. Sadly, the Haitian government has not figured out how to truly help the people of Haiti themselves yet. If there is a silver lining to this earthquake, I hope it is that the Haitian government can begin to honestly work with foreign governments and aid organizations to re-invent Haiti’s infrastructure, schooling system and health care delivery. The will to help in Haiti is definitely there! In the meantime, Haiti will continue to benefit from people generous enough to donate their time and resources to help them rebuild their country. Aid is the only way things are going to improve at this point. The people of Haiti are phenomenal; kind, generous, friendly, caring. I’m already planning my next trip back there! I love it!

*All photos courtesy of Dr. Brian Liddy*

Welcome to Tent City

Hôpital Sacré Coeur was built in 1968 by a Catholic congregation, Brothers of the Sacred Heart who established Center for the Rural Development of Milot (CRUDEM) to build roads, schools, wells and several co-operative ventures in Haiti. Over the years, on the back of surgeon Dr. Ted Dubuque and a grossroots movement stemming from St. Louis, MO, HSC grew from an 8 bed clinic to a 73 bed hospital as Haiti's best healthcare center.

In 1993, CRUDEM was established as a non-profit organization in the United States and took over the operations of HSC. Since then, HSC has served 56,701 Outpatient Visits, conducted 1,227 Surgeries, provided 12,840 Antiretroviral Clinic Visits, and organized 10,075 Community Health Patient Visits. Although Cap Hatien survived the earthquake relatively unscathed, hundreds of thousands of Haiti's from Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas have resettled in the area. In response, HSC works at full capacity in the hospital and has set up a "Tent City" just next to the hospital where less critical patients are being treated and recovering.

As you can see from the these videos, these patients are not recovering on hospital beds but cots and make-shift beds. The 100 Beds for Haiti campaign is working alleviate this problem, and as you will observe an additional 100 beds is critical.

The Entrance to Tent City



Inside one of the tents

We Want to Hear From YOU

The 100 Beds for Haiti Campaign was founded upon the notion of the grassroots movement, and daily we are tapping into our own networks, tapping into our friends' networks, their friends' networks, their friends' networks... well, you get the idea. We have taken on this approach because we are aware of the strengths we bring to the campaign: passion, drive, commitment, intelligence, and diverse personal and professional backgrounds but we are also conscious of our weaknesses, too: we know that we won't always know how to immediately approach different aspects of the campaign but what we do know is that we can always find the answer.

It has been two months since the devastating earthquake first struck Haiti; hundreds of thousands of Haitians lost their homes, their families, and their lives. As individuals, we are all aware of the tragedy that struck Haiti but are we all always conscious of what steps are being made to improve the immediate situation--infrastructure, social services, food aid, transportation, and health care-- and ensure that it isn't just a band-aid that is placed over Haiti but long term solutions are set in place for long term redevelopment?

Since we can't all be conscious all the time, we see this as an opportunity to dive into all our networks--including yours, dear reader--to bring greater awareness, suggestions, ideas, concerns, movements, and partnerships to this campaign. Your feedback is our building block to not only ensure that this campaign reaches our goal of securing 100 hospitals beds for Hôpital Sacré Coeur but also provides us with the social consciousness that any campaign needs to succeed.

So what are you waiting for? Leave us a comment below in the comment section of this blog or join our list-serv and share your input and insights on how to make our goals materialize. We look forward to hearing from you!

300 Patients, 73 Beds

I just stopped by our partner organization's blog, and it reminded me of the immediate benefit of the 100 Beds for Haiti Campaign. Hopital Sacre Coeur still has over 300 patients and only 73 beds to care for these patients:

We still have 300 patients in Hopital Sacre Coeur and still have over 50 volunteers a week. Our staff continues to work without complaint and we are receiving calls from around Haiti to accept patients. The most recent was for a patient who had a cervical spine fracture that left him paralyzed on the left side. This patient was deaf and taught sign language so his injury was especially incapacitating. Only the spine surgeons at Hopital Sacre Coeur could give him a chance to recover his mobility. (Read the whole post here)


The 100 Beds for Haiti Campaign's soft launch is Thursday but there are patients right now who need not only our contributions but our actions immediately affect the outcome of people we may never have the opportunity to meet.

The website is up!

One of the most exciting yet challenging aspects to running a campaign like 100 Beds for Haiti is the collaborative effort of all the team members, and in true form to the our mission to deliver hospital beds to Hoptial Sacre Coeur (HSC) our team is scattered around the United States and the world. When we first envisioned this campaign, keeping Haiti, improving health services, and meeting a tangible goal, we knew we needed a website that would really reflect who we are and what we have set out to accomplish.

From our initial three person meeting at Think Coffee on 4th ave, NYC, we knew we were limited in our own knowledge of how to build a website. Tapping into our network of experienced and concerned friends and colleagues, we were able to build a website using the technical expertise and creative visions of people located in New York, Boston, and San Francisco to voluntarily build this site, giving us their time and resources to host the site.

As a grassroots campaign, we also established our method of mobilization and fundraising: building a team dedicated to volunteering their time and reaching out into their own personal networks is one of our core assets to spreading more awareness and delivering on our goal to send 100 hospital beds to HSC.

Happily and gratefully we've launched the site today! www.100bedsforhaiti.com will host all the information on what the 100 Beds for Haiti Campaign is, our mission, our partners Center for the Rural Development of Milot and the Hopital Sacre Coeur and most importantly where you can go to donate and give your feedback on the campaign! We will use this blog to update you with all aspects of the campaign including fundraising, campaign news, and reports from the ground in Haiti.

A big thanks to Philipp, Scott, Joanna, Brock, Evan, Shane, and the rest of the 100 Beds for Haiti Campaign! Check out www.100bedsforhaiti.com to learn more about the entire team!

Welcome to the 100 Beds for Haiti Blog!

Check back here for regular updates about our campaign, the photo of the day and stories from Haiti.