Haïti

Julien Ferme, 32, graduated from a physiotherapy college in Paris in 2002. He went to Sri Lanka on his first Handicap International mission in 2005, following the tsunami. On 19 February, he was sent to Haiti for six weeks.

What were your first impressions?
It wasn't really a shock because we'd had a good briefing at Handicap International's head office on conditions in the field, even though the widespread destruction in Port-au-Prince is very striking. I expected to arrive in a dead city but to my great surprise I saw that people were beginning to organise their lives again. Some were starting to get their commercial activities up and running again, while others were selling fruit and vegetables. As expatriate staff, we were made to feel very welcome by the Haitian population.

What projects have you worked on?
I was initially assigned to the “hospital” project for 15 days. My mission was to provide post-operative rehabilitation care, but also to inform patients about the follow-up care they would need as part of their recovery. We were supported in the field by Haitians recruited by Handicap International, who were trained and supervised if they were not qualified physiotherapists. During those two weeks, I went from hospital to hospital providing care to the victims of the earthquake.
Over the following four weeks I worked at the orthopaedic-fitting centre. It went very well. There was a lot of demand for rehabilitation from patients, especially when they realised the possibilities offered by wearing a prosthesis after meeting amputees who had already been fitted with a device. Unlike my previous mission in the hospitals, it was a lot easier to establish long-lasting contact with patients in the fitting centre, because they came back regularly.

What happens during consultations at the hospital?
Faced with so many injured people, we have to see a lot of patients during the day and get down to essentials. In general, we stay with the patients for twenty minutes, provide physiotherapy care and show them exercises to do by themselves between our visits. We organise collective sessions when patients suffering from the same pathology are grouped into the same service. The patients then practice the same active mobility movements and muscle strengthening exercises together. In this way, they motivate each other, laugh a lot and it creates a competitive spirit. We set up a referral system based on files to enable us to provide follow-up care. And in terms of coordinating our activities, we tried to establish contact with as many staff as possible in hospitals, to explain what we were doing, and to underline the importance of rehabilitation work.

What are your overall impressions of the mission?
Despite the tough conditions, I loved this mission and I'm delighted to have been able to take part in two of the three health projects in Port-au-Prince! It was the first time I really came face to face with the emergency side of things and it was a great experience for me. The young and international team made the atmosphere really warm and welcoming.
Handicap International is one of the rare associations to perform rehabilitation work. Overall, there are no or very few local resources in Haiti, so it's a huge undertaking for the association and Haitians. Thanks to its know-how and the complementary nature of its projects, Handicap International can successfully perform its work at the orthopaedic-fitting centre in Port-au-Prince.
On my return, despite the tiredness caused by the climate, working six days a week and the stress caused by the risk of seismic tremors, I soon got back into the swing of my professional and personal life, with my head full of images of Haiti and the desire to go back on a mission again.

To read : "Walking again with a prosthesis puts a smile back on their face"