Source : thechronicleherald.ca
Category : Physicians Care Team
By : CLARE MELLOR STAFF REPORTER
Posted By : Health Care Facilities Casselberry
Broken Earth is a medical mission that originated out of St. John’s, N.L., with a multidisciplinary medical team composed of doctors and nurses from various specialities that travel to Haiti to provide (medical) education as well as to deliver medical care to those in need. The surgeon (Andrew Furey) in Newfoundland that started this group … has been down to Haiti several times. (He) came and presented to our group in Halifax (during the spring). Their organization challenged us to put together a team here. I am one of the two orthopedic surgeons that are going, but it is a multi-faceted group, so there is a plastic surgeon, general surgeon, a number of emergency physicians, nurses from the recovery room, (nurses) from (emergency) that are going to go down the week of Nov. 16 to 23. … There will be a team of 24, comprised of about half physicians and half nurses, and we’ll be providing a variety of both emergency and surgical services there. There is a hospital (where we) will be working, alongside the local health care workers to provide care, as well as to educate some of their trainees. … Part of the team that is going down (includes) two pediatric emergency physicians and (pediatric) nurses.
There are a lot of residual injuries and deformities from injuries that were sustained in the earthquake: fractures that haven’t healed or that have healed in a crooked position, a lot of arthritis and deformity … as well as some acute injuries that will come in. They have two functioning operating rooms (at the hospital) so we will probably be doing four to five surgeries per day in those rooms, so we are hoping probably 40 to 50 procedures throughout the week. We really have no idea what to expect going down there, just about anything can come through the door at any time. We will have some lead time from the group that is going to be there the week before but a lot of this will be uncertainty. We are looking forward to it but we are also a little anxious about what we’ll find. We’re hoping that this will become a recurrent thing for us. There has been a lot of interest locally with the nurses and physicians and a lot of people are volunteering their time and resources to do this. We are hoping to make another trip in the spring and, hopefully, it will be at least twice a year that this will be able to be sustained.
At this point we are looking for support from donors. This first mission, because of the timing, we’re funding it ourselves. The doctors have all agreed to contribute funds to support themselves and we were able to access some funds … to pay for the nurses. … For this to be a sustainable thing in the future, we are certainly going to need (community) support. Unfortunately, now that the post earthquake media frenzy has settled, Haiti has fallen off a lot of people’s radar. (It) is certainly a country that is still in desperate need of medical care. They really have limited resources. Even before the earthquake, they were in quite a financial hardship and things have been that much worse since the disaster.
Source : thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1156097-qa-halifax-health-care-team-heads-to-haiti
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