Haitian unrest hits home
Roanoke Times reporter Beth Macy flew to Haiti a week ago to cover Angel Missions Haiti, the Roanoke County-based Christian medical mission as it continues to respond to January’s earthquake -- and the new cholera outbreak. On Monday, Haitians' grief over hundreds of cholera deaths had turned to rage against the United Nations in several northern cities. The Angel Missions team and Macy were caught on the fringe of the violence.
- Haiti:
- Beth and the Angel Missions Haiti medical team flew from Port-au-Prince into Cap Haitien, not St. Louis de Nord as they’d expected, and took a bone-rattling open-air truck ride on rough roads to Bon Samaritain Hospital in Limbe Friday.
Cap Haitien is on the northern coast of Haiti and is about the size, in terms of population, of Roanoke and Roanoke County combined. Limbe is a much smaller city that’s about 15 miles inland.
[Nov. 12, 2010 | From the Newsroom blog, roanoke.com] - Beth reported a chaotic situation from Limbe: not enough supplies and virtually no coordination. Vanessa Carpenter was working the phones to try to get medical supplies trucked in to the team, while her chief nurse, Kez Furth, is working in another town named Cabaret doing triage in a dozen or so tents.
[Nov. 14, 2010 | From the Newsroom blog, roanoke.com] - Dispatch from Beth...
I watched Dr. Chi [Dr. Chiedza Jokonya of Maine] bring a baby back from the brink today.
[Nov. 13, 2010, evening: From the Newsroom blog, roanoke.com] - Dispatch from Beth...
Hard to describe what I’m seeing here in this forgotten corner of Haiti, but I look forward to being rested enough to do it justice at home. At a hospital in Limbe, people are lying in cots in their own waste; 12 people have already died. But many are getting better.
Vanessa’s … just as her husband, Tom, predicted: Mach 3 with her hair on fire.
[Nov. 13, 2010: morning | From the Newsroom blog, roanoke.com] - Meanwhile, the cholera epidemic the team was heading toward tightened its grip on the country.
- Beth continued posting updates to her Facebook page, for her friends and family back home in the States: Wrenching moments from a "forgotten corner of Haiti," glimpses out of the hospital in Limbe, overflowing with patients desperate for medical care.
- She, along with a doctor on the team, talked to reporter Lisa Mullins of Public Radio International's The World radio program to discuss what she'd seen so far.
The fight against cholera in Haiti | PRI's The WorldAmerican volunteers are on the front line of the fight against the cholera epidemic in Haiti. Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with the head of one team from Maine, Doctor Chiedza Jokonya, and reporter Beth Macy of the Roanoke Times, who's covering the team's work, about the difficulties and tragedies they are dealing with, and the resilient spirit of the Haitian people. Download MP3- From Beth's Facebook page...
Sounds from the cholera shelter: The slap of a doctor's hand on a child's arm, trying to raise a vein. A baby whimpering. The crinkle of plastic wrap as a woman recycles the IV packaging discarded by a nurse as a germ shield -- wrapping it around her foot. An old man in a cowboy hat humming his wife to sleep. A young man with Dengue fever and legs afire who wants me to know, in perfect English: "I am a teacher."
[Nov. 14, 2010: 10: 57 a.m.] 
[This week] Follow @roanoketimes reporter Beth Macy as she covers a cholera outbreak in #Haiti >>> bit.ly/apvSdN #Rke #NRV- The Associated Press reported Tuesday that more than 1,000 people had been killed by the cholera outbreak in Haiti. | Explore the AP's interactive report on the epidemic.
- And then, the riots.
UN faces anger over Haiti cholera: Cap Haitien residents protest against peacekeepers for second day over outbre... aje.me/cM4oeg- An e-mail from Beth to her editors...
We r on lock down here..
rioting and road blocks in limbe
We r posed to rendezvous w copter at
1020 but its not safe to make the 5 min ride to soccer field nearby
Tiva is
working her UN connex
We have packed med supplies now for US just in
case
Trying hard to get out but being safe about it.
I'll. Call or e
when I can.
[Nov. 16, 2010: 8:18 a.m.]
