spontaneous planning: Haiti 2014 - Medical Student Mission: Learning Through Experience

Medical Student Missions - volunteering experience as a non-medical person

pharmacy line at the hospital

You are going where??? Why? You are not a doctor, or a medical student, what are you going to do there? These are the questions I got from people about the trip to Haiti that I just got back from. I am not a doctor or in school to become one, I am not even in the medical profession. I do have interest in public health in developing countries as it relates to infrastructure, sanitation and planning. I learned about this organization from a friend who has been on six trips with Medical Student Missions as a team leader. I expressed interest in going on a trip similar to this one; I was drawn by the hands on volunteer experience. I travel a lot and am interested in travel that is more than just tourism. When I was informed that being a medical student was not a prerequisite I signed up. This was just the opportunity I was looking and it turned out to be very rewarding experience.

Before the trip started there were many organizational changes. The pre-trip emails said to be prepared for camping and setting up a compound when we arrived, the usual lodging for this trip was not available because of a contentious divorce. There was discussion of canceling the trip. A few days before the trips departure lodging was secured at a local hotel in Verrettes, the town we were staying in, along with three meals a day. Whew! No camping! As it turned out this seemed to be a very Haitian experience - chaos that works itself out.

The group met up in Fort Lauderdale and flew to Port au Prince. As we exited the airport we were met with a wall of humidity and heat then lead to a school bus that would take us to Verrettes; a town just under 50,000 people that is somewhat politically stable and was not directly effected by the earthquake. We arrived at the hotel after dark not knowing what to expect, I think the hotel far exceeded all of our expectations. It even had air conditioners, which worked periodically.

Neighborhood water well - provided by Rotary International

Monday morning we started the day with a briefing by Dr. William Forgey, known as Doc by everyone, one of the founders and primary organizer of the organization. Doc covered the basics of how we would set up the clinics each day, common Haitian medical issues, chikungunya fever that was rising at epidemic rates through Haiti and Haitian culture as it relates to medical issues and medicine. After the briefing we launched right in to seeing people. At 1:00 pm we set up a clinic at the hotel and started seeing patients, many of whom were employees at the hotel. I was set up with two other people at the pharmacy and eyeglasses area. After the patients saw a medical student and were diagnosed they would then come to the pharmacy for something; usually Tylenol and glasses. We brought 7,000 Tylenol pills down with us. By Thursday we were out of Tylenol, after donating 3 bottles of 1,000 pills each to the hospital and approximately 900 to a local partner clinic in the area. The Doc went to the market and bought three more bottles (150 pills) at $50 a bottle to cover the last two days of the clinics.

ready and waiting for us to set up the clinic

Each morning we would set up clinic in a school or church from 9ish to 3ish; a few medical students worked at the local hospital and a couple students went to the local partner clinic and worked. Each station had a Haitian interpreter to translate to French or Haitian creole. It was pretty amazing and inspiring experience for me to be part of this team, to see the confidence grow in the medical students through out the week and Doc’s unlimited energy and compassion for the Haitian people. The medical, educational and infrastructure need is unlimited in Haiti – I have no illusions that I “helped” but I think this type of experience is not intended to alleviate the need but more to raise awareness of it and have compassion in overwhelming poverty.