Throughout my life, I've heard many words and seen many news reports to describe the country of Haiti. As an erstwhile member of the USAID Haiti earthquake response management team in Washington, D.C., I even spent several weeks writing carefully worded reports about the massive destruction accompanying the January 12, 2010 earthquake and the U.S. government's response to the catastrophe. The image of a nation and people that I had created in my mind was my attempt to amalgamate all this information into something coherent.
It was, admittedly, not without trepidation that I set out as part of a three-person CRDR research team seeking--one year post-earthquake--to ascertain the household-level impacts of the earthquake, the quality of the international response, and the persistent humanitarian needs of the earthquake-affected population. However, now that I am on the ground, I find that words simply cannot convey the complexity and contradiction that is post-earthquake Haiti. Even pictures and other forms of multimedia remain limited in their ability to capture the feelings, senses, emotions, experience, and mindset of the people themselves. At this very moment, on the anniversary of the earthquake, I am listening to song and dance, prayers and tears, praises, sorrow and joy, literally filling the air all around me as the people commemorate the event that will define their generation. Haiti has to be approached and experienced on its own terms.
Nothing in my previous experience, for example, could have prepared me for the moment we entered the classroom at our local partner organization, IDEJEN, only to be met with a classroom full of 36 Haitian youth sitting quietly in their desks and ready to go on this quest as our interviewers--our study's eyes and ears. Nothing could have prepared me to see the interviewers themselves using newly learned scientific skills and professionalism to seek interviews with Haitians living in camps for displaced persons. And nothing could have prepared me to see, on the first day of the survey implementation, the supervisor of each interviewing team returning with an envelope full of completed, precious records of household experiences that we hope will eventually tell a compelling story.
The roads in Port-au-Prince are like nothing I have ever witnessed, and serve as a strange microcosm of the Haitian experience. The Port-au-Prince metropolitan area contains nearly 2.5 million people, ensuring that the streets are always full of pedestrians and vehicles. The roads are narrow and bumpy, and the traffic is simultaneously slow-paced and scary. Because it all seems beyond haphazard, and yet somehow everyone manages to get where they are going, I asked our driver if there was method to this madness. There certainly had to be something I was missing. His answer was both pragmatic and profound. He told me that there is only one rule: "only the strongest get through." When I asked what happens if one gets stuck behind a weak driver, and there is no opportunity to pass. He stoically replied, “everyone gets through."
Sure, the getting around in Haiti would be much more simple if the intersections had stoplights, traffic rules were followed, if the roads were well paved, and if the streets were wide. The people would certainly live better if there wasn't widespread poverty, political intrigue, and repeated disasters to disrupt their progress. But the Haitians have capacity for strength, and eventually most everyone will get through, slow as it might be. With this study, CRDR hopes that a better understanding of the collective experience of the Haitians can help ensure that the money being spent helps that people on their road to recovery.
The Center has been assisting the NGO Mercy Corps in an evaluation of the vulnerable children it assists in China. For some years it has been providing assistance to children of vulnerable households, particularly in rural areas of Northeast China. These are often children orphaned, living with relatives or in single headed households. The Center has provided technical assistance to Mercy Corps in the design of survey methods and analysis of data. The Center is also working with the Yanbian University College of Nursing to assess nutritional status of children in two rural counties, and to measure their social and academic behavior and household support. This work continues the many years of technical assistance to this region of China led by Courtland Robinson. Leading these current activities are Dr Miyong Kim of the JHU School of Nursing and Dr Gilbert Burnham in School of Public Health, both faculty in the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response. The photo shows a planning session for the implementation of the data collection by Mercy Corps in China. At the far right is MinJoo Kwak a Johns Hopkins student assisting Mercy Corps with data management for the project.
Johns Hopkins is embarking on national assessment of drugs in Afghanistan, looking for counterfeit and substandard drugs. These issues are major concerns in conflict-affected states where control measures are weak. The study, led by Dr. Gilbert Burnham, will sample drugs from the public sector facilities, operated by the government and non-governmental organizations (NGO), and the many private pharmacies in Afghanistan. The continuing conflict in the country has contributed to largely uncontrolled importation of pharmaceuticals into the country. There are no testing facilities in Afghanistan, and the regulatory and licensure systems are, for the most part, non-existent or unenforced. A previous study of pharmaceuticals in Afghanistan conducted by Johns Hopkins in 2007 found that among the NGO-supported services, the potency of drugs was generally good. This new study will focus heavily on the private pharmacies, of which there are nearly 11,000 in Afghanistan. Samples will be collected anonymously from pharmacies and analyzed by WHO-qualified laboratories outside Afghanistan.
Dr. Yuri Gorokhovich, City University of New York Lehman College
Dr. Shannon Doocy, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
In July 2010, a geologic field survey and mapping of the March 1, 2010 Nametsi landslide and surrounding areas was conducted using GPS equipment (Trimble ProXH receiver and Nomad data logger). Additionally, images from World View 1 and QuickBird satellites with resolution 0.5 – 0.6 m. were used to identify landslide area before and after March 1 event.
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The Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR) deployed a group of Johns Hopkins physicians, nurses and other experts to Haiti to help the nation's injured and suffering.
Leading the Johns Hopkins mission is , MD, MPH, an emergency physician and co-director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response who served in a number of other disasters, including the September 11 destruction of the World Trade Center towers in 2001 and Hurricane Katrina. The team will be stationed at University Hospital in Port-au-Prince, where they will provide health care to the injured and others affected by the devastation of the massive January 12 earthquake. You can help by making a charitable donation to the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at Make a Gift.
For reporters covering the earthquake in Haiti, Center faculty are available as potential sources for stories dealing with mental health needs following a disaster.
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The Applied Mental Health Research team believes quality mental health care can be delivered in low-resource countries. Laura Murray explains how inexpensive, effective, science-based care can be delivered where it’s needed most. WATCH NOW
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