SALT LAKE CITY — Ask David Studdert why Haiti needs the well-staffed, well-built, American-style hospital Utahns are leading an effort to build, and he tells you about Bella.
Bella is 14 and was orphaned in the January earthquake that ravaged the island country. All five of her brothers and sisters died, too, when her home collapsed. When foreign doctors arrived to provide emergency care, they operated and removed Bella's left hand and right foot.
Studdert was volunteering at a makeshift Haitian hospital as an orderly when it was time for Bella to go home, though she didn't have one. So he helped her into a wheelchair and steered it to the side of the road where she got out. He knew she could easily, out on her own, die of infection or starvation — and probably would.
"She knew it, too, but she smiled and thanked me. For me, this is very personal," he told reporters Tuesday.
The hospital is an ambitious project, admits his father, Stephen Studdert, who headed the Utah Hospital Task Force and is spearheading the efforts to build the American Hospital of Haiti.
The hospital initially will be a 40,000-square-foot facility built to American standards by crews of local Haitians and volunteer American experts. Right now, a team of architects and engineers is designing it; then the group will have a better idea of what materials are needed. They'll do their best to get as much of the materials donated as they can.
The hospital will have 130 beds, a number selected because the Utah Hospital Task Force carried 130 members on its two-week mission to provide medical care and help with construction in the early days following the quake. There will be five wards: pediatric, women's, general, surgical recovery and infectious disease, as well as operating rooms and an emergency room. It also will have an outpatient clinic.
Staffing will be provided by a combination of paid locals as support staff (it will help them and Haiti's economy) and American health care professionals, mostly doctors, who volunteer for two-week stints. They already have some doctors lined up, the senior Studdert said.
When the quake hit, there were 100 students going to the nursing school. They all died. Doctors and other staff in one section of a hospital died. And the need for trained medical staffs in Haiti preceded the earthquake.
So the other part of the Utah-led American hospital mission will be to provide vocational training (with initial focus on medical and dental) and community health education.
One of the giant lessons the task force learned is the value of having people around who speak the language and can interpret, which doesn't always happen with foreign hospitals. The group that went to Haiti included 71 Creole speakers, most returned LDS Church missionaries who had served in Haiti. The hospital will need their volunteer services, too, because it is "an enormous asset to have former missionaries who know the language, the culture, how things are done and also love the people," Stephen Studdert said.
Care will be cheap but not free, in keeping with Haiti's cultural norms, although no one will be turned away.
Several volunteer planners joined the Studderts Tuesday to help unveil the hospital's design and explain the need for donations. Anyone interested in helping can go to gifthaiti.org to learn more about the project and how to donate.
e-mail: lois@desnews.com