Helping Haiti’s hurt, one person at a time (From Bournemouth Echo)

Helping Haiti’s hurt, one person at a time

6:00pm Friday 19th March 2010 in

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WITH an estimated 230,000 dead, 300,000 injured, and countless buildings and lives destroyed, the magnitude of the work needed to repair Haiti must seem insurmountable.

But for David Young, a physiotherapist based at Poole Hospital, it was a case of taking it one person at a time.

The 23-year-old spent three intense weeks in Haiti in February with overseas disability charity CMB, just a month after the massive earthquake that devastated the country.

Working 12 hours a day in makeshift hospitals in Port-Au-Prince, he used his newly acquired skills to help disaster victims begin to reclaim a part of normal life.

Having just finished his orthopaedic rotation at the hospital, the skills he needed to treat the multitude of crush injures and broken bones were fresh in his mind – but the intensity of the work was a challenge.

“There was trauma there that you’d rarely see in this country unless someone had been in a high speed crash,” he said.

But he was able to make a real difference – including spotting a spinal fracture on an X-ray that had been previously missed, and helping a young mum, with an external metal frame pinning her fractured leg in place, have the confidence to walk again.

“There were some people in bed who didn’t walk before I arrived,” he said. “I gave them the belief that they could start walking again and encouraged them to do so.”

David, from Parkstone, said he had been expecting the worst after seeing the devastation on television, but was surprised to find signs of stability and normal life returning.

Even so he said it was “very emotional to drive between the rubble knowing full well that people have died or been injured in that very place.”

He described the psychological wounds as “almost impossible to comprehend” but had to focus on what was in his power to change.

“We needed to look at individual cases. I understand 300,000 people had been injured and disabled from the earthquake. I couldn’t help every single person, but I hope those I have helped continue their rehabilitation. I have certainly done my job to the best of my ability, and I was able to help people in the way I know how.”

He added: “I have the skills and the training. To be able to give people hope is a real gift.”