Nurse tells of mission to aid Haiti survivors

A Bradford nurse has spoken of her recent mission to help survivors of the devastating earthquake in Haiti.

Debbie Lau, who is a senior sister at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, was sent out to the disaster site with UK aid agency Merlin, along with a team of staff.

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The team set up a fully equipped surgical hospital on a tennis court, seeing around 50 patients a day and sleeping in tents on the grounds of a hotel at night.

Mrs Lau said: "There was one father who came to us who wanted to give his little boy away. He had lost all of his family and could not look after him – we had to work with Unicef on that case."

The nurse, who is based in the Accident and Emergency department at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary, was called upon for a wide range of care.

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She said: "We had to be really flexible and do a bit of everything; I worked as a scrub nurse as there was a lot of reconstructive surgery and saving limbs.

"It was really surprising to see people with severe pelvic injuries when the earthquake had occurred two weeks previously. The language barrier made it difficult to empathise with people, which is something I often rely on when treating patients at home."

Mrs Lau said the main problem encountered by the medics was lack of resources such as oxygen and basic medical supplies.

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"We did not have an ambulance and it would take a car hours to go a few miles because the streets were so busy.

"There were hospitals but some where damaged and a lot of staff who had worked in them had been killed," she said.

Mrs Lau, who said the whole experience was extremely rewarding, spent two weeks in the disaster zone before returning home to Queensbury.