The most peaceful area in the entire hospital was a small patio at its centre, where patients rested on benches beneath a wooden pagoda. Nearby, a small, colourful obstacle course helped survivors regain their mobility after surgery and other intensive treatments.
That’s where we met four-year-old Alexandro and his mother, Youseline Philisma.
Alexandro was just one month old when an armed group set fire to the displaced persons camp where they were living. He was plucked from the flames, alive but severely burned.
Since then, Youseline had been taking him to Tabarre’s burn unit — the only one left in the country.
“When I come to the hospital, it’s another world. Everybody understands my little one. Everyone gives us a lot of love,” she told us.
Alexandro will need the burn unit’s care for the rest of his life. Surgeon Donald Jacques Severe is among the doctors treating him.
Severe could leave the country. His wife and children have already done so, departing four years ago for the United States. Armed fighters had overrun their home. Severe himself has a visa to live in Canada. But so far, he has not left.
His fellow surgeon, Xavier Kernizan, tried to explain the sense of duty he and Severe share.
“We know that if we’re not here, someone will struggle,” Kernizan said.
“Personally, we are close to burnout. Sometimes we are close to depression. But there is also this satisfying feeling of having helped to improve someone’s daily life, of offering a little hope to someone in their darkest moments.”
But if the security situation continues to deteriorate, it is impossible to know whether Tabarre Hospital will survive.
On April 11, my documentary team and I drove out of the hospital gates for the first time in a week. We were heading to Petion-Ville, one of the few places in Port-au-Prince still under government control.
There, we walked across a football pitch near the Karibe Hotel, where a helicopter from the World Food Programme picks up passengers. It’s the only way out of the capital right now.
We clambered into the helicopter, its rotors began their churn, and the Haitian capital began to grow smaller as we rose into the air, sailing above the bubble of violence below. I remember feeling relief.
The staff at the hospital stayed behind. They have no intention of leaving.
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