Boston medics rally to aid Haiti quake victims
International Medical Surgical Response Team and a U.S. Disaster Medical Assistance Team offer help
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By Richard Weir
The Boston Herald
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BOSTON — Some people give money, others pray, but some 30 Hub doctors, nurses and EMTs moved by the devastation unfolding in earthquake-ravaged Haiti jumped on planes en route to Port-au-Prince to help heal its battered survivors.
"It's been very heartbreaking,'' Joy Williams, 51, a radiology nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, said of the images of the dead and wounded beamed from the Caribbean country. "But rather than just sending money, I can physically go there and do something. I can provide care and ultimately help save people's lives and comfort them.''
Williams, a former ER nurse who has provided humanitarian relief to disaster victims in tsunami-devastated Indonesia, among other countries, said she expects to fly to Haiti on Monday. However, difficulties getting flights into the Port-au-Prince airport could delay her departure.
Some 30 local surgeons and surgical nurses are already on the ground in Haiti, many after landing in the Dominican Republican and journeying by car to Port-au-Prince, and another 10 are due to leave in the coming days, said Dr. Michael VanRooyen, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital who is coordinating the area's disaster relief response.
The nurses and doctors, along with two Boston EMS members, EMT Mike Vojak and paramedic Greg Bond, are working with an International Medical Surgical Response Team and a U.S. Disaster Medical Assistance Team. Three doctors from Brigham and Women's are also assisting the Dominican embassy and United Nations as part of emergency medical and public health teams evaluating patients at triage centers.
"In a hurricane like Katrina, you get a lot of loss of life and property but very few injuries. But in an urban earthquake, you get a lot of very serious injuries that overwhelm hospitals,'' said VanRooyen. "People get crush injuries, broken arms and legs, head wounds, infected wounds, gangrenous limbs, a lot of things that require medical and surgical care. People can get seriously infected from crushed muscle.''
Keri Stedman, spokeswoman for Children's Hospital, said a team that included its trauma director, Dr. David Mooney, was expected to arrive in Port-au-Prince yesterday. Staff from Tufts and Boston medical centers have also answered the call.
Donna Barry, policy director for Partners In Health, a Boston-based nonprofit that founded six hospitals and 10 medical clinics in rural Haiti, said it received offers from nearly 1,000 doctors and nurses from across the country wanting to help in Haiti.
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