In Haiti, Cubans Among First Responders, Again: Luis Orlando Oliveros-Serrano MD Coordinator, Cuban Medical Team in Haiti.

Abstract

Soaring summer temperatures, systematic urban and political violence, unreliable infrastructure-power outages, water shortages, sporadic transportation and interruption of other basic services-plus the illness, death and economic straits wrought by COVID-19, are what Haitians awake to every day. On the morning of August 14, 2021, they also woke to the earth in the throes of violent, lethal convulsions caused by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake, along the same fault line responsible for the devastating 2010 disaster and stronger still. As if this weren't enough, Tropical Storm Grace was bearing down on the nation, about to dump biblical amounts of rain on the heels of Tropical Storm Fred. When the Haitian President was assassinated on July 7, Haiti still had not received a single dose of any COVID-19 vaccine-indeed, it was the last country in the Americas to receive vaccines. Later that month, 500,000 doses arrived in the country, donated by the United States via COVAX, the WHO-led initiative to assure at least some vaccines reached low- and middle-income countries. In Haiti, getting those vaccines into the arms of the population is beset by cold chain, distribution and bureaucratic problems, and compounded by widespread vaccine hesitancy; when the earthquake struck, only 14,074 of those doses had been administered.[1,2] Suddenly there was a new, more urgent tragedy, the earthquake leaving thousands of dead, injured and displaced-perhaps hundreds of thousands once the real tally emerges. As in the 2010 quake, the doctors, nurses and technicians comprising Cuba's medical team in Haiti-a commitment Cuba has maintained with its Caribbean neighbor since 1998-were among the first responders. The 2010 relief effort included an additional 1500 health professionals and specialists from Cuba's Henry Reeve Emergency Medical Contingent. Just 24 hours after the August 14th quake, MEDICC Review spoke by phone with Dr Luis Orlando Oliveros-Serrano in Port-au-Prince, where he coordinates Cuba's medical team in Haiti. His disaster response experience had already taken him to Haiti twice before and to Pakistan, Bolivia and beyond.