Behind the scenes at Hadassah Medical Center there are many workers behind the scene that are responsible for food, laundry, sanitation, security and administration. They keep the hospital twenty four seven running and make Hadassah successful.
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HAITI AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE
by Wendy Elliman
An Unfinished Sentence.
Strewn amid the rubble of what had been Haiti’s capital, was a heap of splintered school desks and benches. Nearby, lay a blackboard, still improbably whole, half a sentence chalked on to it.
“That unfinished sentence symbolized it all for me,” says Hadassah medical clown Dudi Barashi, 33. “In my mind’s eye, I could see that Port au Prince teacher writing on the board and the children following what she wrote, as the earthquake struck and probably killed them all.”
Part of the medical team at the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem for the past six years, Barashi has volunteered in HMO’s out reach in India, with AIDS-stricken orphans in Ethiopia, with survivors in tsunami-ravaged south-east Asia and with civilians under bombardment in Northern Israel during the last war with Lebanon. But, he says, he has never seen anything that compares with the misery and destruction into which he plunged last week in Haiti.
“It was as if the city had been no more than a house of cards,” he says. “I have no words to describe the chaos and devastation. And when I thought that in every one of those crushed buildings there had once been life, and that life had been extinguished, it was unbearable. In my many years’ experience as a medical clown, this was the first time I ever felt that here is a tragedy that’s too vast to grasp hold of.”
Friday Night.
Barashi was one of four Israeli clowns who arrived in Haiti on the Friday following the Tuesday quake. “Each of us agreed to go immediately,” he says. “We left Israel on Thursday, the day on which the Israeli rescue mission set up their field hospital in a Port au Prince soccer stadium. Anyone who’s followed the news knows about this hospital — how efficient and well- equipped it was, how for days it was the only place to get effective medical help, how its doctors and nurses worked endlessly and tirelessly.”
The clowns’ journey got underway with a 16-hour flight from Tel Aviv to the Dominican Republic and continued overland into stricken Haiti.
“We arrived at the Israeli field hospital on Friday, as Shabbat came in,” says Barashi. “The exhausted doctors, nurses, reservists and soldiers were about to make Kiddush as we arrived. We’d driven for hours through hell, and then, in the midst of this deranged and wounded world, we’d reached an oasis of humanity.”
The medical team — organized by the Israel Defense Forces and staffed by physicians from Hadassah and from every other major Israeli hospital — was weary beyond words, but the Kiddush, says Barashi, seemed to energize them.
“I was overwhelmed with a sense of being part of this Israeli team, part of the Israeli people,” says Barashi. “I’d come to this place of tragedy and turmoil, under the Star of David, to do whatever I could.”
The Medical Clown.
What can clowns do among so much suffering? “We can act as a filter,” saysBarashi. “Even if your eyes are awash with tears, you can still help. I went upto a child, perhaps two or three years old. His family was gone, his home was gone. But he was still a little boy. His attention was drawn by the man in the funny clothes. I smiled. He smiled. I made a funny face. He smiled more broadly. I started chatting gibberish. For him, here was a man who didn’t know about the earthquake, but knew how first to smile, and then to sing and to dance. For a little while, at least, he left his fear and his pain.”
As delicately as Barashi and his colleagues work with sick youngsters in Hadassah, seeking their unspoken permission to come closer, that delicacy was magnified many times among the traumatized children they met in Haiti.
“We took our cue from the youngsters,” he says.
One among too many in the Israeli field hospital, a little girl had had her crushed leg amputated just above the knee. “The dressing had to be changed, but the child was in pain, and screaming in her language: ‘Be careful of my leg!’ I went over and repeated her words, as best I could. She stopped struggling and stared at me. I said her words again. And then I chanted them and then began to sing them, mugging around. She giggled and joined in my ‘song,’ correcting my pronunciation as we sang — and the nurse changed her dressing.”
The Clown as Medical Aide.
The needs were overwhelming. “I saw a child crying on a bed, his young mother sitting next to him holding his hand, a vacant smile on her face,” says Barashi. “I asked the nurse about them. ‘The child is hungry,’ she said. ‘The mother isn’t feeding him, and I haven’t got a spare minute.’” Barashi took some chocolate cake and a cup of milk, and went over to the distressed mother and son. He smiled at the mother, and although she didn’t smile back, she made eye contact. He turned toward the child, broke off a piece of cake and soaked it in the milk.
“The little boy sucked it from my finger, tasting its sweetness,” he says. “As soon as he’d swallowed it, he opened his mouth for more. I gestured to the mother than she could take a break. She was very young, and it was a good time for her to step out of the tent. The child ate the whole piece of cake and then some porridge.”
Dozens of babies were born in the Israeli field hospital (many births brought on prematurely) and there were no cribs for them. “I saw a line of buckets, filled with blankets, and asked what they were for,” says Barashi. “They were for the new babies.”
Later that day, he saw Hadassah-Mt Scopus operating room nurse Reuven Gelfond come into the field hospital with a package. Inside: screws for external reinforcement of limb fractures. The team had run out of orthopedic screws, and Gelfond had found a local workshop which adapted nails to help fix fractures.
The Clowns and the Israeli Medical Team.
“We worked in tandem with the Israeli team,” says Barashi. “It’s important for me put on record what an honor it was to work with them. As a team and as individuals, they had come from across the world to work in the worst of conditions because they wanted to help. They’d work 36-hour shifts, and then feel guilty when they rested. The hospital tents were hot and stuffy, with only one air conditioner functioning. There was scarcely water to wash in. But they carried on as if they were in the best of facilities.
“We medical clowns realized very quickly that our role wasn’t only to reach out to the battered people of Haiti, but also to our own emotionally and physically shattered team.
So instead of sleeping when an exhausted nurse was on duty, I’d join him or her for a coffee. Soon after we arrived, I was standing outside the field hospital, when one of the doctors I knew from Hadassah came out of surgery. Catching sight of me, he smiled and said: ‘What in heaven are you doing here!’ And I answered him: ‘I’m here to bring that smile to your face.’”
Search and Rescue.
Israel also fielded a large (and highly effective) search-and-rescue team to Haiti following the catastrophe. They, too, made use of the clowns. “We’d go with them to people living in temporary camps — people who’d lost everything and had made themselves shelter from a blanket on sticks,” says Barashi. “Many were in shock, and none had anywhere to go or anything to do. They’d simply sit there in the heat all day long. The search-and-rescue people thought that perhaps we clowns could provide a diversion.”
To reach these shocked, bereaved people, with whom he had no common language, Barashi relied on instinct. “I’ve been a medical clown for seven years and a street clown for 15 years before that,” he says. “It’s all about finding connections between people, being sensitive to them and thus allowing them to attach and open themselves emotionally.
“As the children started coming up to me, drawn by my clown costume, I simply responded to what seemed to interest them. There was a little girl with long strands of twisted hair, so I ruffled it and called ‘Spaghetti!’ She laughed and some others grinned. I looked at more kids and likened their hair to other foods and pretty soon we had a whole kitchen going, with more and more children and some of the adults joining in.
“I started speaking gibberish. They backed off for a moment, and then began to smile again. I pulled a face. Some of them imitated it. I made a sound. They repeated it. I sang a note. They followed me. And soon we were singing together, songs about nature and the goodness of the earth — despite what had happened, or perhaps because of it. The children were in a circle around me, and the adults on the outside, all of us singing.”
One time when the Israeli search-and-rescue carried a giant water container into a camp like this, Barashi started up a Hebrew song: ‘Moses Struck the Rock, and Water Gushed Forth.’ “I don’t know how that even came into my head!” he says. “It’s a song that Israeli children sing in kindergarten. But, of course, the whole search-and-rescue team knew it and joined in. And with its repetitive Mayim, Mayim at the end of each line, it wasn’t long before the Haitians were singing along as well.”
Haitians and Israelis.
“The people I met in Haiti were, without exception, grateful and responsive to everything we tried to do,” says Barashi. “Amid the horror and the loss of everything they’d ever known, children were children and were ready to play. An old woman came up to me and grasped my hand, smiling into my face.
“Spoken language wasn’t necessary. People are people everywhere, and despite barriers of language and culture, clowns can play a unique role in helping them. It was excruciating to see the depths of their need, but we were buoyed we could open avenues of communication and, for a short while, guide people away from their fear and pain. There’s nothing as serious as knowing how to make a frightened or suffering child laugh, to separate that child from its pain and fear.
“I had the Israeli flag as part of my clown costume, and our personnel and our hospital were all clearly identifiable as Israeli. The Haitians knew who we were and they were simply grateful that we’d crossed the world to help them. Alongside the overwhelming grief that I felt for these people, was a vast pride in Israel, in Israelis and in being Israeli.”
The Hadassah Medical Team in Haiti
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An Ethiopian immigrant shares her story of starting an arts, crafts and clothing center with the support of Hadassah.
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Hadassah Goes 2 the Movies!
PLEASE DOUBLE CLICK IMAGE TO ZOOM
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Medical Breakthrough
The Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, in cooperation with Hadassah France, led by Prof. Sydney Ohana, developed a new virus capable of defeating cancerous tumors, that brings many patients to Israel from around the world.
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You’re Invited!!
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The following is what Ron Krumer, Director of External Relations at Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem heard from Dr. Taras Shirov, one of Hadassah physicians in Haiti:
They arrived 3 days ago and built the field hospital from scratch in a soccer stadium. Until this morning they did not have any local infrastructure such as running water or washrooms. They worked for 36 hours non-stop, operating on more than 70 people (not counting endless small treatments and procedures they do not have records for). As of this morning they can have showers under running water instead of using 3 large bottles per person for shower.
The numbers of injured and sick people are overwhelming and it seems as if no change is around the corner. American physicians and nurses help in the Israeli hospital, and an American nurse who has been living in Haiti for years serves as a translator because language differences is a major problem. Imagine a situation where a physician or a nurse tries to take vital signs from patients and cannot communicate with them.
Dr. Shirov is an anesthesiologist and an orthopedic surgeon. He works there as both – running back and forth between the anesthesia machines and the operating table. Most of the ER work is done at night while operations are performed during the day. The weather has been favorable so far although it’s very hot (80’s during the day) and humid (80%). The only air conditioner is in the operating room, and they used regular ventilators.
The following story reflects a unique Hadassah contribution to the overall Israeli effort. They ran out of screws for external reinforcement structures for limb fractures. This screws are screwed into the bone. Reuven Gelfond, the OR nurse from Mt. Scopus found a local factory where he had them create screws out of regular bald nails.
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Girl from Former Soviet Union and Boy from Cyprus Defeat Cancer Thanks to Hadassah Medical Center
-Hadassah International News
Thanks to the Hadassah Medical Center’s Dyna and Fala Weinstock Department of Pediatric Hemato-Oncology, endowed by generous donors from the United Kingdom, a 2 1/2-year-old girl from the Former Soviet Union with an eye tumor (retinoblastoma) and a 14-year-old boy from Cyprus have defeated the cancers that were threatening their lives.
Hadassah’s Pediatric Hemato-Oncology Department is renowned for providing comprehensive, sophisticated medical treatment to children and adolescents with cancer and severe non-malignant hematological diseases. Referrals come from well beyond the borders of Israel.
The parents of the toddler with the eye tumor had been told by their physician in the FSU that both of the child’s eyes would have to be surgically removed. The parents found Prof. Jacob Pe’er, Director of Hadassah’s Department of Ophthalmology, and Dr. Michael Weintraub, Director of the Department of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology, on the internet and e-mailed them. Shortly after that, parents and child were at Hadassah, where tests and consultations began. The Hadassah team decided that, with chemotherapy, one of the child’s eyes could definitely be saved and possibly the vision in her second eye.
“In cases of retinoblastoma,” Dr. Weintraub explains, “we obviously do everything possible to control the tumor, which is our main concern. However, beyond the immediate medical need, we also try to avoid having to remove the eye, for obvious cosmetic reasons.”
The boy from Cyprus was brought to Hadassah with a massive tumor on his chest. The physicians in his home country were unable to treat it successfully. Dr. Weintraub and Thoracic Surgeon Dr. El-Ami diagnosed the lesion as a malignant germ cell tumor. This tumor arises when germ cells abnormally migrate during the embryonic period, traveling from the testes to the chest. They remain dormant for years, but eventually develop into a tumor.
In this adolescent’s case, the cells became a massive tumor. With surgery and chemotherapy, however, the boy recovered completely and returned to his normal life—which includes playing football!
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Dr. Michal Lotem talks about specialized treatment for Cancer patients and how Hadassah Medical Center is giving new hope to terminally ill patients.
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