By Edith Honan
NEW YORK, Nov 8 (Reuters) – Manhattan doctor Lucy Doyle has
done stints with the global medical relief organization Doctors
Without Borders in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya.
But her latest assignment is a real eye-opener: New York City.
In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, Doctors Without Borders has
set up its first-ever medical clinic in the United States, and
Doyle finds herself on the front line of disaster just miles
from her day job.
“A lot of us have said it feels a lot like being in the
field in a foreign country,” said Doyle, who specializes in
internal medicine at New York’s Bellevue Hospital, now closed by
Sandy’s damage.
A week after Sandy swept through New York City, knocking out
power and public transportation for days, Doctors Without
Borders established temporary emergency clinics in the Rockaways
– a remote part of Queens that faces the Atlantic Ocean – to
tend to residents of high-rises that still lacked power and heat
and had been left isolated by the storm.
“I don’t think any of us expected to see this level of
lacking access to healthcare,” said Doyle.
Sandy’s death toll in the United States and Canada reached
121 after New York authorities on Wednesday reported another
storm-related death, this one in the Rockaways. Tens of
thousands are thought to be displaced in New York City.
DIRE SITUATION, 15 FLOORS UP
The situation in the Rockaways is dire: high-rises don’t
have working elevators, street lights are dark and until a day
or two ago, pharmacies had either been destroyed or were
shuttered. The almost complete absence of police, coupled with
the constant darkness, has left residents fearful of leaving
their apartments.
“Their pharmacies are closed. Their doctors’ offices are
closed. They need a way to get refills of the medicines they
take all the time,” said Danya Reich, a physician at Beth Israel
Medical Group in Manhattan, as she waited to see patients in a
first-floor laundry room that was serving as a medical clinic.
In one squalid building on the ocean’s edge that has been
without power and heat for 11 days, the stairwell reeked of
vomit and urine. And yet a steady stream or residents made the
trek, some joking that at least they were getting exercise.
One case was especially concerning to the doctors was a
couple living on the 15th floor. Victor Ocasio, 46, has chronic
bronchitis, asthma and has been throwing up blood. His wife
Lorraine Bryant, 42, is diabetic and obese and uses a walker.
Both have been complaining of chest pains and wooziness.
“I’m scared to walk down those steps. I fell before and I’m
scared I’ll fall again,” said Bryant. But she was resisting the
idea of going to a shelter, where the doctors said she and her
husband could get regular medical treatment.
“I’m scared to go into a shelter. Bad things happen there,”
she said.
John Josey, 72, who has been bed bound since having a stroke
some years ago, suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure and
arthritis.
A home health aide who tends to him said the pharmacy where
she normally fills his prescriptions washed away in the storm,
and a family member had asked that a Doctors Without Borders
volunteer visit to fill out new prescriptions.
A CVS pharmacy opened a few days ago in the Rockaways, but
patients who have never been there have no records on file.
As David Horne, a dermatologist volunteering with Doctors
Without Borders, tended to his patient, Josey’s family recounted
what it had been like the night of the storm. The water had
nearly come up to second-floor windows and at one point had
reached 11 feet high.
Horne said that with so many prescription requests, the
doctors were trying to stay vigilant. One patient had asked to
have a prescription for a very potent narcotic that had not been
filled in months and for which there was no obvious need. He
declined to fill it.
In many ways, this side of New York City is much like the
war zones or disaster areas where Doctors Without Borders
normally works.
“Every night we spend in the dark, somebody’s life is at
risk,” said Rejelio Arnold, 25, who has spent the last week
delivering water and other essentials to his sick and elderly
neighbors on higher floors. “Mostly it’s just food and water and
candles that people are trying to get.”
(Editing by Dan Burns and Mary Milliken)
