It is the middle of the night at the Chone field hospital in Ecuador, and Squamish nurse Ian MacKay has a severely dehydrated three-day-old baby sleeping beside him.
“Hopefully we will pump him with enough fluids to send him home tomorrow,” MacKay wrote in an email to The Squamish Chief.
MacKay has been at the field hospital since a magnitude 7.8 earthquake, centered 27 kilometres southeast of the coastal town of Muisne, rocked Ecuador on April 16.
The need is still great in the earthquake-wracked region, MacKay said, although the attention of the world has shifted to other events.
“You rarely see anything in the news and even our media team left,” he said. “It’s unfortunate, given the desperate situation out here.”
To date, 660 people have died, 32 people are missing, 113 people have been rescued alive and 22,421 people are being housed in temporary shelters, according to the Ecuador government’s Risk Management Secretariat.
The Samaritan’s Purse medical team, of which MacKay is a member, has been overwhelmed with patients since shortly after setting up the hospital, according to MacKay. Common injuries resulting from the quake include damage to femurs and hands, he said.
The earthquake happened at night so unfortunately many were in their houses at the time and were sleeping, MacKay explained.
Weeks have passed since the quake, and some of the newly arrived injured have been without medical care the entire time, MacKay said.
“I have 10 patients in the tent… It’s a mixture of post-operation [patients] fractures of legs, burns, and a few appendixes. It’s tough to imagine many of the fractures have gone a week without getting any help,” he said.
“One man has had a dislocated hip for the last week, which was successfully relocated and secured surgically this afternoon.”
Some of the patients survived the earthquake but have been injured in the chaos that has followed, MacKay said.
One man had been trapped in his car for five days after the quake and wasn’t injured but was seriously hurt the day after he was rescued, according to MacKay.
“He was riding on his motorcycle when he was blindsided by a car fracturing his ribs, neck, pelvis and foot,” MacKay said.
“An ultrasound revealed extensive bleeding in the abdomen and his blood test soon confirmed it.”
A nurse telling him he was a blood-type match to the man woke MacKay from a rare sleep. He donated blood before starting his shift, he said.
Some of the care he gives is to the family members of patients. “I have spent much of the evening walking around with a young, hungry two-month old baby,” he wrote on April 25. “Her mother had her leg put back together today and was doped up pretty good on narcotics. As a result, she can’t breastfeed and I am still waiting on family to bring formula.”
Living conditions for the medical team, which started out rough, have slowly begun to improve, MacKay said.
“Showers have finally been installed and air conditioning is hooked up in the sleeping quarters to protect us from the blistering heat,” said MacKay.
But there is little time to rest.
“I see ambulance lights in the distance so I’ll finish up,” MacKay said, ending his email to The Squamish Chief.
For more information or to donate to help the Ecuador quake victims, go to samaritanspurse.ca/ or www.redcross.ca.
