“The Good Doctors”

With most earthquake victims now treated, foreign doctors are attending Haitians’ normal health problems leaving questions about what will happen to the country’s health infrastructure after their departure. ‘The line of patients at this city’s battered General Hospital forms early. The sick come to be seen by ‘the good doctors.” At 10 on a recent morning, Jean Fenisto Joseph, 58, and his 28-year-old daughter, Roselord, were two of the several hundred Haitians standing or sitting on benches — a tightly packed crowd of people sweating silently under a Caribbean sun that had already pushed temperatures into the 90s. The pair had been waiting for about five hours, they said, and had at least another hour to go. Like most in line that day, the father and daughter had not suffered any injuries in the earthquake that laid waste to Port-au-Prince in January. Instead, both complained of general aches and pains, describing the symptoms of common colds. ‘I know the good doctors are here. I came to get some of the good help,’ said Joseph, speaking quietly through an interpreter. ‘I would have stayed home if it was like before.’ In the wake of the 7.0 temblor that leveled much of Port-au-Prince and other communities in Haiti, a massive influx of emergency medical aid arrived to tend to the thousands of people injured. Doctors, nurses and medical supplies from more than 200 different medical organizations, by one estimate, descended on the island nation.”