MHCC students visit Haiti

Seven MHCC nursing students will leave Oregon for Haiti on Saturday to assist caregivers in a clinic for eight days, gaining valuable experience providing healthcare on an international level.

The group will head to a village called Gramothe, about 12 miles south of Port-au-Prince, and near the epicenter of the Caribbean island country’s devastating January 2010 earthquake, said Ida Jefsen, president of Mt. Hood’s Student Nurses Association (SNA).

The earthquake killed as many as 300,000 people and displaced another 1.5 million, many of whom became homeless, said Christina Elford, SNA vice president.

The traveling party consists of volunteers who have teamed up with Mountaintop Ministries. “It is a faith-based organization, but (it doesn’t) require the people who come and volunteer to adhere to any kind of religious doctrine,” Jefsen said.

The students plan to provide healthcare and other services to as many Haitians as possible.

They will need to be prepared to deal with a very high level of poverty.

“Haiti is one of the top 10 poorest countries in the world, and (inhabitants) live, literally, right off the coast of Florida,” said Elford. “It’s hard to understand when you’re the richest country in the world, and even the poorest of our poor are in some ways richer than people in Haiti.”

Haitians lack day-to-day basic healthcare necessities. “(If) you live in a country where if you need a Band-Aid and you don’t have any, and nobody has any Band-Aids, that puts things into a different perspective,” said Jefsen.

The students have prepared for their trip by watching YouTube videos and reading books. “I’m reading a book called ‘Mountains Beyond Mountains’ that gives you at least a bit of a political background regarding how Haiti is now,” said Katie Stevens. “There’s only so much you can do.”

Reading and hearing stories about working in poverty stricken countries overseas doesn’t prepare students as much as prior experience, which the students lack.

“I feel like emotionally preparing yourself for the trip is impossible,” said Jefsen. “You can watch as many videos and movies — accounts from people that have been there — I just don’t think any of that’s gonna do anything, until we go there ourselves.”

MHCC instructors have mentored the group, warning that due to lack of needed supplies, they will be unable to fully treat many people. “They need scans or imaging services that are not available,” Jefsen said. “So, sometimes what you have to do is give someone ibuprofen and tell them to go home, but in the back of your head, you know that they have maybe a few months to live.”

The village of Gramothe does have clean water, a school, church, orphanage and clinic and a shelter for people waiting for treatment. All of these projects were undertaken by Mountaintop Ministries, the students said.

The short-term mission has attracted some unwarranted criticism from outside the group, but students say they have been able to get past it.

“People ask, ‘How much can you do in eight days?’ What I tell them is a really short answer,” Jefsen said. “I tell them, take 285 patients and times that by eight — that’s how much we can do in eight days.”

Such crises are a motivation for students. “One of the reasons we all got into nursing is because we care about global healthcare,” Stevens said. “That is something that we want to tie into our careers throughout our lifetimes.”

The Haiti-bound students raised money to fund their trip, and found donors eager to help.

“It’s been really humbling to us. When I started fundraising, I thought I might get a few hundred bucks. But I had almost a quarter of my goal in two days, so it’s very eye-opening for us,” said a grateful Elford.

“We have all these people that are backing us up, and we are their hands and they are willing to pay so that we can go and do these things that they can’t do,” she said.