Little Navensky rests on a bed outside L’Hospital General in Port-au-Prince following his family’s harrowing escape from their quake-ravaged home.
Photo ©2010 James Addis/World Vision

Navensky Charles might be surrounded by the stench of death, but he is alive.

Like all patients at L’Hospital General in downtown Port-au-Prince, the 18-month-old cannot be accommodated in a hospital building. The few buildings still standing are unsafe to use.

Consequently, he lies in a hospital bed in a street outside. Regularly, trucks rumble past, carrying corpses. They come from the city morgue about a block away. Outside the morgue, hundreds of bodies are stacked three deep.

A harrowing experience

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As darkness was falling, and the streets were in chaos, Jerome and his wife Nadia had to wait until morning before carrying Navensky to the hospital. The walk took nearly two hours.

It was not until the early afternoon that hard-pressed medical staff could treat him.

World Vision’s experience

Navensky and his anxious parents wait outside the quake-devastated hospital.
Photo ©2010 James Addis/World Vision

Navensky moans softly and flinches if he thinks you are about to touch him. Otherwise, he does not complain. Nadia and Jerome will spend the night anxiously watching over him. They have no home to return to anyway.

Jerome is thankful for the humanitarian organizations, such as World Vision, who have come to help following the worst quake in Haiti in more than 200 years.

“If it was not for the [non-governmental organizations], the Haitian people would be lost,” he says.

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