Dr. Steven Foley, a Colorado Springs gynecologist, has arrived in Haiti and begun to treat victims of the earthquake.

For more background on Foley, who has been going to Haiti on medical mission trips for 20 years, see this story.

 Here’s his report to us on Friday:

Fri 1/22
We arrived in Port au Prince early afternoon yesterday and as I was getting off the plane I heard someone say, “Anyone on this plane from Colorado?” I looked up to see a reporter from Denver Channel 7 standing there. We spoke briefly and then it was off to unload all the supplies and make contact with the Haitian pastor we would be staying with.

The trip through town was very much like the pictures we had seen on TV – it seemed to me that 50-60% of the buildings had been affected – broken down walls, debris, hanging wires everywhere. The house we were to stay in had been damaged but was still standing – the roof looked a little questionable to me but it had withstood the aftershocks and after the long day of travel sleep sounded great. The night was uneventful and we woke at 5 a.m. to begin our trip to the town of Petit Goave where we will be working for the next week.

As we traveled further away from Port-au-Prince, the extent of the damage increased. The town of Leogone has been 80-90% destroyed and our town >90% of the buildings are gone. The hospital in town was completely destroyed except for the operating room. Our team set up a tent hospital on the grounds of the Wesleyan mission compound. Amazingly, the buildings on the compound have little if any damage.

There was a constant stream of patients. Most of what we saw today were injuries that started out as relatively minor but have become major due to infection. Because of all the debris and fallen buildings, everyone has cuts, scrapes, and other injuries of varying degrees. By now, the tissue is dying and infection is making healing impossible. Our task is to clean out all the damaged tissue, clean the wounds the best we can, apply dressings, give antibiotics and hope it heals.

One little girl in particular stands out to me. She is 5 years old and the tip of her finger was smashed by falling debris. It had become infected and now we needed to amputate her finger to stop the infection. The trauma that these amazing people have withstood – and the additional trauma of losing limbs as part of the healing process – they are indeed resilient. We are so thankful for the supplies that we were able to bring – antibiotics and wound care supplies. Hopefully we will have enough for everyone who is coming.