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Alison Smith is a medical student at Tulane University who wrote on-the-ground reports from Haiti for the MTV Newsroom Blog in the days and weeks after January's devastating earthquake. She returned to the country this week with a medical team to set up a field clinics in the Central Plateau region and check up on patients in the capital of Port-au-Prince. With the rainy season about to start and more than a million Haitians still displaced, Smith reports that much work is still left to be done.

By Alison Smith

I am back in Haiti with a group I have put together of nine medical students and three doctors, two months after leaving from the earthquake-ravaged island. The situation is much more difficult, the people are much more sick and the challenges are even greater than ever before. Millions are homeless. The coordination of relief efforts has been met with roadblocks at every corner due to the lack of infrastructure and the corruption that runs rampant in every political sector.

Flying into Port-au-Prince, the once-barren hillsides are covered with tents and shacks constructed out of tarp. At first glance, the airport seemed much more organized than before, however this facade gave way as we ventured farther out into the masses of people. The city is still heavy with the stench of death. We brought hundreds of pounds of supplies to set up a makeshift clinic in the Central Plateau, the poorest region of Haiti.

The area did not have much structural damage, but the people here are feeling the effects of the disaster in the form of lost loved ones and an even greater lack of basic resources like food and water. We are working with a Haitian man who has done amazing work in creating opportunities for education and jobs in this very poor area. The root of the problem from the earthquake is that Port-au-Prince has been overwhelmed for decades by an influx of people from the countryside looking for better opportunities. The city infrastructure could not support millions of people.

In three days, we have seen and treated 600 people. We have seen so many frustrating situations where people are dying from lack of health care. We saw children with such severe bacterial infections that their skin was peeling off. We saw a woman who had breast cancer that was so far advanced that we could see it. I took a child to the hospital today with a severe pneumonia and undiagnosed sickle cell anemia and the doctors refused to treat him because his family couldn't afford to pay. I had to take them back to the hospital and pay in order for them to get treatment. It is so frustrating that Haitians continue to suffer while there is so much aid available.

Despite having been to Haiti five times before, the mysteries of this country continue reveal themselves in front of my eyes.

Tags Haiti