Post Earthquake Syndrome; and how you can help…..

Okay, I don’t know if that’s really a medical term or not, but let me explain a couple of things that appear to be happening……

If you have been a close follower of Dixie’s writing on the blog, then you’ve heard the stories about some of the kids:

You’ve read the story about Donley and his valiant struggle.

You read about Clercineau and Dina.

You’ve read about Givoani and Stevenson.

And you’ve read about the daily struggles that so many people and so many children face in Haiti.

So what’s Post Earthquake Syndrome?  It’s a term that I’ve coined to represent the stress and the toll that the earthquake is taking on the least of the least of these.

• The little kids like Clercineau who weighed 5 lbs at the age of 1.
• The kids like Donley who struggled so valiantly and moved so many of us to tears in his last time before going home to his Father in heaven.
• The kids who are currently living on the street, in tents, under tarps and are really struggling to stay healthy because they don’t have three meals a day and they don’t have the medical attention they need.
• The kids in Haiti who aren’t even born yet but who’s mothers experienced the trauma of the earthquake and it’s aftermath while pregnant and it is having negative effects on their health and will make their physical condition after they are born very precarious.

So what can God’s Littlest Angels do to combat this?

We are basically realizing that we need to upgrade some of our medical equipment so that we can give the “least of the least of these” a fighting chance.

What things?   A couple of things that are needed soon:

• As Dixie mentioned on Friday, we had problems with our ISTAT machine.    What’s an IStat machine?  I asked Dixie to describe it in one sentence and here’s what she had to say:

The IStat machine allows us to test a child’s blood for abnormal results which then allows us to decide how to treat the child.

So, having one that works means we have the ability to get the information that we need and get it right away.    That means we’ve got a better chance of savings lives.

• Bubble CPAP – I know that if I attempted to explain what these are, I’d mess it up quite badly, so I’m going to quote what Heather Maeding sent me.   Heather is a GLA adoptive mom and happens to also be a nurse practitioner specializing in taking care of high risk infants.   Here’s what she sent me about Bubble CPAP:

Bubble CPAP is a great respiratory support system for developing countries. It is also used in the United States in Neonatal Intensive Care Units.  CPAP makes it easier for babies with premature lungs or pneumonia to breath. Your lungs have little sacs at the ends of the branching of tubes. The sacs exchange the oxygen and carbon dioxide to keep oxygen in your blood and get rid of carbon dioxide. In a premature baby the sacs may be lacking surfactant (soap bubble like substance that makes it easy for the sacs to inflate with each breath). The CPAP helps hold open the little sacs so that it is easier for the baby to breath. The baby still has to breath on their own but it makes the work of breathing lower for them. It can also be a treatment for Apnea of Prematurity. The immature neurological system causes pauses in breathing. CPAP is a treatment that can help Apnea of Prematurity.  It is important with premature babies that they do not receive 100% oxygen as a child or adult would. Their brains and eyes are still developing. We know babies that receive high amounts of oxygen have worse neurodevelopmental outcomes and vision impairment than those who receive blended oxygen with air.  Bubble CPAP will allow GLA to provide the respiratory support premature and ill infants so desperately need as well as blended oxygen so as to protect their developing eyes and brains.  Bubble CPAP has been used successfully in many developing countries with dramatic results increasing survival. And the best part is it is not very expensive to set up and use.

She said it much better than I could. 

• Oxygen Concentrator – There is a certain type of oxygen concentrator that will work even for very premature infants.   Most of them won’t.   What does an oxygen concentrator do?   It allows a baby to be on oxygen without having to have oxygen tanks (tanks that are very hard to get in third world countries).   Plus the type of oxygen concentrator they are looking at can be battery operated, so it will enable them to transport sick kids to the hospital or to the airport as needed and still keep them on oxygen and keep them alive.

We need 1 of the IStat machines, 2 of the Bubble CPAP systems and 1 Oxygen Concentrator.

There will probably be additional items of medical equipment that we need that we’ll discover over the course of the next few weeks and months.

Now the question – what’s it all going to cost? We are in the middle of conversations with Abbott Labs (the maker of the IStat) and we have medical people working on obtaining the rest of the equipment, much of it at substantial discounts.    But realistically, we’re looking at $20,000 to not only obtain the equipment but also to get the supplies that will be needed to properly operate them for the near future.

So, how can you help?  A couple of concrete things:

1. Use the “chip in” entitled “Life Saving Medical Equipment” and donate whatever you can.  If you don’t think your donations matter, read Luke 21:1-2 and then do what you can.
2. Forward a link to this to all of your friends, family and others that you know.   Encourage them to donate whatever they can.
3. Post a link to this on your Facebook page, on your blog, spread the word any way you can.

I would love to be able to report back that we’ve got the money by the middle of the week.   What an awesome testimony that would be to the power of people who want to help the children in Haiti.

Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom of this post.   Thanks for doing your part in helping us raise $20,000 to help the kids in Haiti.

Lives depend on our response.

Tom Vanderwell