Three-year-old Stefi Pierre giggles with delight as she uses her new artificial leg to launch a soccer ball across the room — a joyful moment with foreign aid workers that masks the uncertain future for her and thousands of other amputees in Haiti.
The girl’s wobbly, shuffling steps are her first on a difficult road to recovery in a temporary rehabilitation center treating victims of the Jan. 12 earthquake, which left Haiti overwhelmed with amputees like Stefi. She and others who lost limbs, some with multiple amputations, now face the practical realities of struggling for survival in a devastated Haiti as well as a social stigma in a country that has never been kind to the handicapped.
Stefi’s mother, Fabian Pierre, said she was more worried about her daughter being shunned than the surgery she would need soon to correct her rushed amputation.
“Once she goes to school, it’s going to be an issue,” Pierre said. “Some people will have a problem with it.”
As many as 4,000 people had amputations from the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that the Haitian government said killed an estimated 230,000. Those who lost limbs need elaborate follow-up treatment because the surgeons, rushing to save as many lives as possible, often made “guillotine” amputations: a straight cut through flesh and bone that did not leave enough skin for proper healing or cushion for an artificial limb, said Bob Horton, a nurse with Merlin, a British nonprofit medical aid group.
Some wounds are infected from inadequate follow-up treatment, an agonizing situation for the often-homeless survivors as well as the foreign and Haitian doctors and nurses who treat them.
While many amputees, including Stefi, remain hospitalized, others have been discharged with nowhere to go but squalid shantytowns, the so-called temporary settlement camps that are home to 600,000 people in the quake zone.
CRACKED SCREEN: The problem is an embarrassing setback for Apple, which spent more than a decade developing the device and touted its durability The iPhone Duo, one of Apple’s biggest new products in years, is drawing a growing number of complaints from customers who say the foldable display cracked after just hours or days of use. In these cases, customers reported hearing a crunching sound when unfolding the phone, followed by a large crack forming along the center crease. Some users also experienced a white patch or other display malfunction on the right side of the screen. Reports of the problem first surfaced on Reddit and other social media platforms. Bloomberg News has since independently verified the issue with more than half a
Long dubbed an “air-conditioned nation,” Singapore is experimenting with cooling alternatives from chilled beams to “passive displacement” to curb its thirst for energy-guzzling air-conditioning. The city-state has the highest per-capita air-conditioner ownership rate in Southeast Asia, with about 99 percent of private residences equipped with cooling units. Singapore’s local building sector accounts for one-fifth of its emissions, while cooling itself accounts for 40 to 60 percent of a building’s energy consumption, according to studies. A stroll down Orchard Road highlights that dependence. Shoppers are greeted by blasts of cool air that waft into the street as doors swing open — a major draw
Ethiopian online influencers are pushing for their government to invade neighboring Eritrea and seize access to the sea, following its success against rebel and Eritrean forces in the past few weeks. The Ethiopian army has advanced right up to the border after repelling an offensive by rebels in the northern Tigray State who were supported by Eritrean troops. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has repeatedly said that securing a base on the Red Sea is a vital national objective for Ethiopia, which lost its coastline when Eritrea gained independence in 1993. Some online influencers say that the opportunity to invade has arrived. “The time
Beijing yesterday dismissed as “groundless speculation” a report that said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) was the target of a Chinese spy plot. The article by the New York Times, published on Thursday, said that US intelligence officials concluded that a Chinese executive linked to a Singapore-based data center company had been funneling information to Beijing. “The report in question is based on groundless speculation and is nothing more than an attempt to smear China,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun (郭嘉昆) told a regular briefing. China is in a race for tech dominance with the US, which restricts the export
RSS