Haiti Earthquake: Karla Dozzi joins AMDA Team to help in Gonaives

Nurse recalls catastrophe in Haiti. Registered nurse Karla Dozzi travelled to Haiti as part of an emergency medical team to treat the countless Haitians, who had suffered crushed bones. Dozzi, a Bloor Street West and Lansdowne Avenue area resident, spent 10-days in the city of Saint-Marc treating victims of the earthquake at Saint Nicholas Hospital. Courtesy photo
When registered nurse Karla Dozzi arrived in Haiti as part of an emergency medical team some five days after the earthquake, the streets were full of people walking aimlessly, most of them wearing masks.

"At first I thought, 'what's that smell,'" she said over a hot apple cider at Holy Oak, one of her favourite coffee shops, on Bloor Street West, east of Lansdowne Avenue, not far from her home.

That scent, realized the Regent Park Community Health Centre nurse, was the smell of decomposing bodies. Landing in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, Jan. 15 as part of the Association of Medical Doctors of Asia's (AMDA) Canadian Chapter, the team travelled to Haiti by road, arriving three days later.

Although she toured the devastated city of Port-au-Prince, Dozzi, along with the group of medical professionals, was stationed in nearby Saint-Marc at Saint Nicholas Hospital. Co-ordinated by the Quebec organization CECI (Centre d'etude et de cooperation international), they provided aid to those suffering from multiple crush and fracture injuries, both open and closed.

Dozzi said she felt compelled to help as soon as she learned of the magnitude 7.0 Mw quake that struck just before 5 p.m. Jan. 12.

"My partner lives in Africa," she said of her fiance. "I don't have kids; I have the type of life I could leave and come back to. I knew my skills would be useful."

Dozzi wrote to Rose Charities, a group whose aim is to support and rehabilitate communities to improve their quality of life. The Sudbury, Ont. native first heard of the organization while living in Vancouver. A university friend of hers, knowing Dozzi was a nurse, connected her.

Dozzi said she connected with an American team of surgeons and nurses, who had just arrived from Massachusetts around the same time, and sought direction from its members. Much of her work was comprised of dressing wounds as infection posed great threat. As she treated the wounded, Dozzi said she got to know some of the Haitians and their stories.

"One of my clients - I call them clients - for example, had an open fracture. When I first met him, he had a bandage on. It was smelling and there were flies on the dressing," she said. "I cut off the cast or splint and started redressing it. He had already had surgery to remove the infected part of the leg. You could see the jagged part of the bone."

He had been told he was going to lose his leg, said Dozzi.

"He said, 'No, I'd rather die,'" she said. "Some of the health care providers spoke to him in Creole. They said, 'Fine, if you don't want surgery, we're going to move on to someone else who does want surgery.'"

Dozzi treated another patient who had suffered an open pelvic fracture. A 23-year-old woman with diabetes, she was in excruciating pain. â?¨"We didn't have the orthopedic instruments to operate on her," said Dozzi. "I was doing palliative care with her. I don't know if she's dead or not. She was really sick. I bathed her. It took six of us to bath her. She had skin breakdown. All I did was show her extra care and compassion."

Dozzi put in 10- to 12-hour days. After the fifth day, she thought, 'I've got to get out of here.'

Aggravating matters was the tension that had grown between the Haitian doctors and the American doctors, who "didn't see eye to eye."

Fortunately, for Dozzi, CECI had found her team a place to stay.

"I had a mattress on the floor, running water, a shower," she said.

And, someone to cook for them.

Dozzi experienced one of the reported 52 aftershocks.

"Everyone took to the streets," she said. "One woman jumped out of her second story house with a baby in her arms."

Aid is reaching Haitians, whom Dozzi describes as strong, compassionate and kind.

"I saw them so generous with their family members, with each other. They were volunteering at hospitals," she said. "There's definitely a generous spirit in that country."

Dozzi was asked to go back to help, but she said that right now, she can't afford it. She has a responsibility to her clients here at home as well. As a primary care nurse at Regent Park Community Health Centre, she works the vulnerable, the poor, new immigrants, addicts, the homeless and those with mental illness. Because she has travelled internationally, Dozzi said she could deal with the heat in Haiti and the culture.

"Was I prepared to see the extent of pain, of people screaming, the smell of death? Can you really prepare yourself for that? I don't think so," she said.

LISA RAINFORD
Feb 09, 2010