American Medical Volunteers in Haiti
Washington - As Haiti recovers from a devastating January earthquake, American doctors, medical students and personnel are helping the country rebuild its health care system.
In June, doctors and students from Tufts University School of Medicine ( http://www.tufts.edu/med/ ) in Boston arrived in the first group of Tufts medical personnel who will rotate in and out regularly. They offered their services in a tent-city clinic in the capital, Port au Prince, and at the Sacre Coeur Hospital, 120 kilometers to the north, where earthquake damage was minimal. Many of the most severely injured patients had been transported to Sacre Coeur.
The lead doctor of the Tufts delegation, Dr. Mark Pearlmutter, said most of the Tufts students recently completed their first year of medical school and had little clinical experience. They performed support functions, such as taking family health surveys, measuring patients' vital signs and recording medical procedures, according to Pearlmutter. Some students also performed Pap smears, drew blood samples and inserted catheters, while others learned how to make artificial limbs, then trained Haitian counterparts to do the same, he added.
Several of the Tufts doctors and students said they found the experience inspiring.
"I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the local community health workers," said Adam Nadolski, a student. "They work with little or no infrastructure and even less funding."
Graham Brant-Zawadzki, also a student, commented on the resiliency of the Haitian patients, who lived in tents with temperatures that rose as high as 49 degrees Celsius during the day. "They haven't been home in five months and probably don't even have a home to go back to, but they are smiling, singing and laughing," he said.
Dr. Joyce Sackey, the medical school's dean of multicultural affairs and global health, said she was impressed by the way Haitians were reaching out to their injured neighbors by assisting them with bathing and feeding. Haitians were "encouraging people with new disabilities to dance in their wheelchairs," she said.
Sackey said that the earthquake caused many psychological as well as physical injuries to Haitians. "Thousands need rehabilitation. The goal is to get them productive again," she said.
Tufts students also devised a project to equip community health workers with cell phones, which they would use to notify Sacre Coeur Hospital of medical emergencies, receive advice or prepare patients for entry. A Catholic foundation, CRUDEM ( http://www.crudem.org/ ), which operates Sacre Coeur Hospital, supports the cell phone project.
Doctors and medical support staff from the U.S. Children's National Medical Center ( http://www.childrensnational.org/ForPatients/default.aspx?gclid=CO6M3efm6KICFSFN5QodCgqtMQ ) in Washington also work through CRUDEM to travel to Haiti and contribute care to patients and training to the Haitian medical staff there.
Dr. John F. Lovejoy III, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon, twice led groups from the children's medical center to Haiti. The first group arrived January 17, five days after the quake, and stayed for a week. His father, John Lovejoy Jr., a retired orthopedic surgeon residing in Jacksonville, Florida, was the chief medical officer at Sacre Coeur, where he has been volunteering for more than a decade. The younger Lovejoy said the doctors performed 140 surgeries on children and 15 to 20 more on adults during their week there. He said working with his father in Haiti was "an amazing opportunity ... I'll probably never get again. We both saw incredible reward in the care we were able to provide. We're both going to continue going back to Haiti and continue to help the hospital expand its capabilities."
The younger Lovejoy will make his next medical volunteer trip to Haiti in December. The elder Lovejoy will revisit the country next February.
In his home city, the elder Lovejoy raised about $60,000 for a prosthetics laboratory and arranged for its construction and shipment to the Sacre Coeur Hospital, according to his son. The prosthetics laboratory went into operation in May and is able to produce about two dozen artificial limbs during a 10-day period when there is adequate staff to operate it, he added. He said the prosthetics lab "was an amazing effort, and it will give benefits for years to come. I couldn't be more proud of my father."
Suresh Magge, a pediatric neurosurgeon from the Children's National Medical Center, traveled to Haiti with the younger Lovejoy on his second trip. Magge said his week there treating children and training doctors was an eye-opening experience.
"I realized how much need there is in many places and we can do a lot of good. I realized that many things we take for granted here are luxuries there. If more volunteers go to places like Haiti, we can do a lot of good there," Magge said.
