• The earthquake in Haiti killed and injured thousands, and wiped away thousands of homes. Now, a more grim reality is setting in for those who survived and were hospitalized -- if released, they have nowhere to go.
• 25-year-old Jertha Ylet came to the hospital on August 14, unconscious and with a crushed leg. Her 5-year-old daughter survived unharmed, but her father and two other relatives were killed, her brother seriously injured and her house destroyed. A surgeon had put a metal rod in her lower left leg, but Ylet hadn't been out of bed or tried to walk since she arrived. Ylet was discharged Thursday --- the hospital needed her bed for other patients. "I said to the doctor, 'I don't have any place to go,'" Ylet said.
• Medical staff is sympathetic, but pragmatic. The beds are needed. "After someone gets well they have to go." In the first days after the earthquake, the hospital was overwhelmed with patients. The injured lay on patios and breezeways awaiting care. Now there are still people in those areas, but they're discharged patients or others never admitted at all but who are coming for the donations of food and water and clothing arriving at the hospital daily.
From AP News/Daily Pnut
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