For many injured in Haiti, it's amputate or die

From Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC News Chief medical editor:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Nearly a week after the devastating earthquake, victims who sustained crush injuries and broken limbs are now suffering from rampant secondary infections.

Faced with an overflow of patients and an ongoing shortage of antibiotics, medical teams have few options for saving lives. Amputation is increasingly the only resort, says NBC's Dr. Nancy Synderman, who has been helping to treat patients in Port-au-Prince.

She spoke with msnbc.com about the rush to save lives at a small private hospital in Port-au-Prince.

What is the main concern of medical teams treating quake victims now?
Increasingly, it’s been amputate or die. Secondary infections are huge. It’s the No. 1 cause of death right now. We’ve not yet seen cholera or dysentery.

We’re seeing so many people with crush injuries and open wounds. And because there isn’t the time or the antibiotics to save an infected arm like you might have back home, the decision is, if you can amputate an arm, you can save a life.

We’ve been at Sacré Coeur, a small private hospital that has been turned into a trauma center. On Monday, they estimated they were going to amputate the arms or legs of up to 70 people.

Whether it’s babies or the middle-aged, they are tagging people for these operations right and left. Because so many Haitians don’t have medical records, a doctor we followed, Dr. Julie Manley from Raleigh, N.C., was walking around with a pad of paper and writing down what patients needed and taping it to their chest.

We watched a young girl, probably about 5, with a severe injury to her right leg. Dr. Manley said to her mother, she needs to have her right leg amputated and the mother said, no, that she would rather that she die. The little girl could hear the interpretation about her leg in French and she started crying with great anguish, "mama, mama, mama." The doctor had to instruct the mom to hold her daughter’s hand and not leave her. The little girl is going to die if she doesn’t have her leg cut off.

In a country where survival is so tough, for an amputee, it’s nearly impossible. Its raises the question of what’s going to happen? There are no prosthetics for a country that may soon be a country of orphans and amputees.

I saw babies whose skulls had been cracked open like watermelons. The best doctors could do is put a wrap around their heads and cover them and leave them to die.

The job right now is to treat the minimally wounded and get them on their way so they don’t take up valuable space. Doctors have to take the people who are dying and humanely put them on the periphery and cover them to keep the flies off. Then you have to take care of those people where you think you can make a difference.