A faint beam of light comes out of a hospital room. On the bed, a young child tries to hold back his tears by clutching his handkerchief tightly. A piece of sheet metal entered his foot while he was walking barefoot in the rubble of his shantytown. Sitting opposite him, a doctor tries to sew up the wound, a headlamp screwed onto his head. “I have less and less light to care for the little one”he whispers. “We are a bit left to our own devices.”
Five days after the passage of Cyclone Chido, Thursday December 19, the Kahani dispensary, in the center of Mayotte, is still cut off from the world. In order to save the fuel that powers the generator, the electricity runs intermittently. The telephone network is not responding, with the exception of a few Orange customers. In the cistern planted in the middle of the courtyard, the reserves of drinking water are beginning to dry up. “We are completely isolated”warns the head of department, Adrien Cussac.
Behind high concrete walls and a row of decapitated palm trees, this medical center has taken on the appearance of an isolated fortress since Friday December 13. That evening, a team of around twenty caregivers met in the establishment, located a thirty-minute drive from Mamoudzou, the prefecture, and the Mayotte Hospital Center (CHM) on which it depends. A cyclone is predicted, but everyone still hopes that it will avoid the island. “I told them: take water, food and something to sleep”explains the doctor.
On Saturday morning, the cyclone hit the island head-on. And the dispensary is seriously struggling. The whole team takes refuge in a room. Until the door suddenly opened. “We tried to consolidate it with IV poles”remembers Juliette, another doctor at the care center. Insufficient to deal with Chido’s roar. The team then runs through the corridors, slaloming between collapsed ceilings. They find refuge in a small room inside which they erect a barricade to hold the door.
Half-heartedly, the team denounces a catastrophe which seems to have been poorly anticipated. A “cyclone case” is well installed in the establishment, but it only contains around ten mops, a few headlamps and two collapsible cans. “Everything was useful”smiles a caregiver. The real needs are immense. Communication with the Samu was cut, the maternity hospital was flooded and many devices were out of service.
The dispensary found itself completely isolated, planted in the middle of land that had become impassable. An island within an island. “One of our couriers has become our ‘carrier pigeon’”slips Adrien Cussac. Lacking reliable means of communication, this man makes the link with the CHM by swallowing kilometers of broken roads.
On Monday, hope returns thanks to the discovery of a satellite phone. Alas, he only had 30 seconds of battery life left. We will have to wait until the next day so that exchanges with the rest of the island’s health services can finally resume. A working satellite phone has been delivered. And caregivers with a network can communicate with each other again.
After several days of complete blackout, generators were finally sent on Wednesday. But faced with the shortage of gasoline, they are only activated for a few hours a day. Especially since fuel looting is to be deplored. In the corridors, caregivers parade equipped like hikers. “We see patients very poorly with these headlamps, it deteriorates our care”laments Juliette, who arrived two weeks earlier as reinforcements on the island.
This accessory is far from being the only change in the habits of caregivers. The new dispensary organization is now well established. All patients pass through a reception desk located outside the building, then are distributed to different areas. “Red zone” posters were drawn in felt-tip pen and stuck to doors for the most serious cases.
But in reality, patients are rare. Only around a hundred passages were counted that Thursday, in the middle of the afternoon. Much less than before the cyclone. “Most of the injured never reached us and those who were too seriously injured are surely dead”laments Adrien Cussac. In the surrounding area, many of the 60,000 inhabitants lived in bangas, the tin houses which cover the hills of the island. Few now have the means to come to the dispensary.
“We treated everyone who came, but we saw the tip of the iceberg. I think there are a phenomenal number of injured.”
Adrien Cussac, head of department of the Kahani medical centerat franceinfo
Despite all these difficulties and the extended schedules, “there was a surge of heroic solidarity among the caregivers”welcomes Adrien Cussac. The doctor decided, a year and a half ago, to return to work full time in Mayotte. “The best and worst choice of my life”he slips.
In a dark corridor with a bare ceiling, a doctor arrives with a new child in her arms. A neighbor just took her away. “Oh damn, it’s bleeding”she exclaims when she sees a few red drops on the ground. The little one will quickly be taken care of by the caregiver, headlamp still on his head, while waiting for the dispensary to finally be reconnected to the rest of the island.
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