After a massive disaster, people often say they wish they could do something to help - but rarely do.
That's the average response, but then again, local Ian MacKay is not your average 20 year old.
Only six months after returning from his first trip to Haiti to help residents recover from the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, MacKay headed back there.
"I don't know what was worse - going there not knowing what to expect or going there knowing what to expect.
"The first time I went I was way in over my head," he said. "I ended up working in an operating room for a month so I definitely became pretty emotionally attached at that point - to the people."
MacKay's only medical certification is his Level 3 first aid ticket - and evidently, an intense desire to help those in need.
He found out his uncle, Dr. John Potts, whom he accompanied on the initial visit, was going back and decided to go along again.
"I really wondered, 'How was I going to be a help this trip? What was I going to end up doing?"
MacKay didn't know there was a cholera outbreak until he boarded the plane for the final leg of his two-day trek in Miami and received a brochure informing everyone of the cholera epidemic.
"That was the first I heard of it," MacKay said. "I'd never heard of cholera or anything like that before. My uncle, who spent 12 years in Africa, knew about cholera but had never had to deal with it."
Hours after landing he found himself shipped north to Villard where he helped establish a cholera clinic and "by the end they considered me an IV technician - I was giving the needles and administering intravenous fluids."
MacKay's education about cholera, its symptoms and its consequences did not take long.
"Cholera is diarrhea and vomiting and it's not your regular diarrhea and vomiting because there's no substance to it - it looks like water," he said. "People die in a matter of hours because it dehydrates people that quick."
Cholera is a waterborne illness spread by feces-contaminated water and MacKay said that in a country like Haiti, where latrines are few and far between and everyone bathes in the same river, the spread of cholera is inevitable.
It also spreads like wildfire.
"Cholera isn't something that comes and goes. Cholera is going to be in Haiti for years and it's was just a matter of time until it spreads throughout the entire country," he said.
"Since the earthquake, everyone lives in tent cities and everyone lives in such close quarters, it can go wrong so quickly."
After spending a week in Villard, MacKay and his sponsor organization, Samaritan's Purse, headed to Bercy, where the most recent cholera outbreak was spreading rapidly. The non-denominational Christian relief agency started with three tents and within one week, volunteer workers had 16 tents filled to the brim and running around the clock.
"They can come in standing saying they have symptoms of it but they're losing litres of water at a time," Mackay said. "Some of them walk in themselves; other ones are carried in wheelbarrows, other ones are in the back of tap-taps [Haitian taxis].
"It's a life-or-death treatment - if you get to treatment and you get fluids, you live and if not, you die."
The idea behind treatment is to flush the contamination out of patient's system. This could take large amounts of water or intravenous IVs if the illness is grave enough.
In addition to providing treatment, those at the clinic teach Haitians how to purify their water with Clorox and bleach and teach them to rehydrate themselves with salt and sugar.
During his month-long stay in Haiti, MacKay helped treat 2,000 cholera patients and Samaritan's Purse had a 0.6 per cent mortality rate - extraordinary considering the average mortality rate is between six to eight per cent and that even in ideal sanitary conditions, it might be as small as two or three per cent.
MacKay said it was amazing seeing the difference in people - some would come in on the brink of death and within a matter of hours could be cured by clean water.
But not every patient was so lucky.
"I watched a lot of people die over there. You can't save them all," he said.
"We had a nine-year-old orphan boy die in our clinic, and with no parents to take his body away, he was just thrown in the mass grave with the rest of them."
MacKay said sometimes there would be more than a dozen people waiting to be treated because they were so short staffed and looking to MacKay to save them.
"Here, I am just a little Squamish kid and now I have 10 people looking at me that within hours are going to be dead unless and I get an IV in these people."
MacKay said memories like that would haunt him forever and watching doctors, nurses and volunteers break down was regular occurrence.
The volunteer said that during the most traumatic moments, he's in auto-pilot mode, so the emotion and shock doesn't really set in until the flight home.
"On my last two trips, the hardest part of my time was getting on that airplane and taking off - that's the most emotional part for a lot of people," he said, "knowing that you're going home to a nice warm bed and your health care system and security in general, but leaving behind these people who can't leave and escape the situation they're stuck in."
Despite the trauma and the disturbing memories, MacKay said helping people who have been through so much makes it worthwhile.
"You develop an emotional attachment to the people," he said. "I don't want to call it an addiction but saving a life is the most amazing feeling ever."
MacKay said both the scarring moments and the triumphant moments are important, and "not something I'll ever forget."
MacKay said he'll likely help organize fundraisers in the coming months to facilitate one more return to Haiti before attending school for nursing in September. To donate to his sponsor organization, visit http://www.samaritanspurse.ca/.
