It took weeks of planning and praying, but Healing Hands for Haiti is now open for business.
A team of 20 doctors and nurses flanked by security personnel have set up camp on a patio overlooking the charity's compound in the foothills of Port-au-Prince. They built a makeshift medical clinic, which they advertised on a local radio station, and on Saturday opened the gates to the compound for the first time since the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.
"They were able to treat 175 people in one day," said Healing Hands Executive Director Eric Doubt, from his office in Georgetown, Ontario.
The work is unforgiving and just the beginning for the charity, founded 12 years ago by Utah rehabilitation specialist Jeffrey Randle, and friends.
Haiti's earthquake has created a new mass population of amputees, posing a challenge for volunteer medical personnel and for Haitian society, which has long shunned the disabled as a burden or curse, say national aid groups.
Before the quake, Healing Hands operated one of three clinics in Haiti devoted to rehabilitative therapy and one of only two shops that make prosthetic hands and feet, said Doubt. Healing Hands' facilities -- its shop, clinic, two apartments and a guest house -- were destroyed by the quake.
But under the umbrella of Handicap International, Healing Hands hopes to jumpstart pre-existing plans for a full-service physical rehabilitation hospital.
The hospital may or may not be built on the existing compound, a six-acre plot owned by a private benefactor who leases it to the charity for $1 a month.
"It could be new partnerships and collaborations emerge that didn't exist before the earthquake," Doubt said. "It's a whole new ballgame for anyone who was operating down there."
Handicap International estimates the quake is responsible for 2,000 new amputees in Haiti. That number could grow to 4,000 and adds to a population of about 800,000 previously disabled Haitians, according to Handicap International.
"The situation in Haiti today is really unprecedented," said Thomas Calvot, a specialist in the care management of earthquake victims at Handicap International in Lyon, Haiti.
The number of injured in Haiti coupled with the destruction of health facilities, has left many doctors with no other choice but to amputate, Calvot said.
Even before the quake, the prognosis for amputees wasn't good. Haiti's disabled are treated as "second-class citizens," said Randle who just returned to Utah from an LDS Church-sponsored relief mission there.
Unable to do manual labor, adults are relegated to begging and children are often barred from attending school, he said.
An hour's flight away in the U.S., Americans have access to the latest in prosthetic technology, bionic components powered by microprocessors that can propel star athletes to victorious feats.
But such devices can cost up to $20,000 and even more to maintain, Randle said.
"With all the manual labor, dirt and dust there [Haiti], some of these parts wear out after a few years," Randle said.
There is no organization to cover all the needs.
In coming months, Healing Hands hopes to team up with Handicap International to provide postoperative rehabilitation care.
Physicians for Peace has begun to collect used prosthetics, crutches, canes, walkers and wheelchairs. And several fabricators are donating hyrdraulic components.
But those components must then be fitted to patients, a time-consuming process that typically happens after two to four months of healing.
Randle hopes the bright side of the earthquake will be expanded access to medical care for Haitians.
He tells one story of a man who was shot in the back and paralyzed. When Healing Hands got to him, the man was covered in bed sores that would have required skin grafts and months of treatments costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Even if the charity had found a way to pay for the life-saving treatments, Haiti hospitals couldn't have provided the specialized aftercare, Randle said. "We were left with no choice but to fly him back home so he could die with his family .
"We're all hoping this outpouring of volunteers and support is not short-lived."
