Medical Student Missions - volunteering experience as a non-medical person
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| primary school just outside of one of the clinics |
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"Feast God" Holiday 19 June - The Haitians told us
it was the day God abandoned the Haitian people. |
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| Rice fields |
Other organizations doing
good work in Haiti:
HAS: Hospital Albert
Schweitzer
