PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - Medical teams are performing hundreds of amputations a day in Haiti, mainly because of infected leg and arm wounds, doctors at field hospitals in the capital and beyond said a week after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake rocked the Caribbean nation.
Vital aid supplies have been slow to reach Haitians due to huge logistical problems, such as fuel shortages, blocked roads and fears of looting, meaning medical treatment has arrived too late for many quake victims.
"We have many patients coming in where wounds have not been covered properly or at all and have become infected. The only option sometimes is to amputate," Roberto Feliz, an anaesthetist at a makeshift hospital in the United Nations base in Port-au-Prince, told AlertNet.
Loris de Filippi, emergency coordinator for the Choscal hospital run by aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), said every time he left the operating theatre he was met with many people asking to be taken in for surgery.
"We were forced to buy a saw in the market to continue amputations. We are running against time here," he said in a statement released by the medical charity.
Experienced MSF medical staff say they have never seen so many serious injuries, the agency added.
The Sacre Coeur hospital in the north of Haiti is full to the limit, with seriously injured survivors brought over by helicopters, said relief organisation Malteser International.
Doctors on the ground say they have to amputate a leg or an arm in nearly each case.
Festering wounds that need amputation are some of the most common injuries among the survivors of the Jan. 12 earthquake. Many injured patients have been left for days without appropriate medical care. Medical facilities are now completely over-stretched, aid workers said.
"Family members of patients are taking measures into their own hands since the hospital system is completely overwhelmed," World Vision said on Sunday.
"One World Vision volunteer saw an amputation performed in the hallways of the general hospital using unhygienic tools. World Vision volunteers also have seen a severed foot become an amputated leg because the wounds were not sterilised," the organisation said in a briefing.
The amputees will need a significant number of crutches and braces, it added.
While United Nations and U.S. troops are now speeding the arrival of relief, basic aid and medical supplies, including water and pain killers, are still in short supply.
"We're using ketamine as pain relief during amputations. Ketamine is going like water," Feliz said on Tuesday.
Â?ItÂ?s very difficult out there,Â? added Ataul Aziz, field operations manager with British charity Humanity First. Â?WeÂ?re doing triage on the streets.Â?
Kidney failure, caused by dehydration and crush injuries which release toxins into the bloodstream, is another common problem among survivors and can lead to death, doctors said.
But medical teams working around the clock in Haiti fear the worst is yet to come as infections and diseases such as cholera and measles spread in overcrowded and unhygienic conditions.
(additional reporting by Olesya Dmitracova in London)
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