Haitians grateful for help

The pungent smell of rotting flesh still hangs heavily over the streets of Haiti's capital city.

Almost a month after an earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince, the odor of decomposing corpses stings the nostrils and permeates the vents of vehicles able to weave around debris on the roads.

For Las Vegas resident Jules Nau, who traveled to his native land two weeks ago to help administer medical aid to earthquake victims, a deep breath of fresh air is nothing to take for granted.

Over a crackling telephone connection from Haiti, Nau said the worst part is watching as desperate families burn the bodies of dead relatives to cope with the stench.

Nau, a 35-year-old operations manager for Global Experience Specialists, is staying at his father's house about 20 minutes outside the capital city with four other medically trained volunteers. They have been handing out medicine and dressing wounds for the injured. Most of the supplies had been donated to the Las Vegas Haitian Disaster Relief Committee.

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that flattened Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12 has left hundreds of thousands dead and millions homeless. Nau said he's hearing from medical sources in Haiti that 230,000 are dead and 4,000 amputations have been performed.

"The good that comes out of this is the appreciation of life," Nau said. "It changes the way you think. You come back to the U.S. so grateful for things like the basic endless supply of water."

Nau's group, which traveled independently of major disaster relief organizations, has handed out well over 10,000 pills of Tylenol and gone through 5,000 boxes of extra-strength antibiotics and treated more than 1,000 victims.

"We've got local connections," said Nau, who was trained in trauma care and emergency response while serving in the Haitian and Ecuadorian militaries years ago. "I know a lot of doctors and raided their medicine cabinets once we ran out. They were overwhelmed with patients and unable to go to the streets like we were."

Painkillers, topical antibiotics and sports drinks are tough to come by, he said.

Nau said he saw one patient who had a gash, 4 inches long and 3 inches deep, from a cinder block that sliced its way to the bone. Nau and his colleague spent an hour handpicking maggots out of the badly infected wound, cleaned it out completely and bandaged it up. They saw the woman about a week later, and she was healed enough to dance around and thanked them for saving her leg.

"Just one person doing that and showing that they are OK and survived and (are) appreciative of what you've done for them, that will last me a lifetime," Nau said. "They're moving on, but it's not over. People are grieving. There's disparity and people are hungry. I'm not saying let's give them everything they need for the rest of their lives; but we have to teach these people how to fish again, because they've lost everything."

Contact Kristi Jourdan at kjourdan@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279.