Our Medical Team in Haiti

When the medical team arrives at the Hope Center, we set up all of our supplies on long tables. Medications such as worming pills or pain relief pills are taken out of individual packaging and put in small baggies with symbols on them to indicate to the patient how often they are to be taken. We then load boxes with supplies for each day’s clinic so that we have enough of each item for each location.

On other days we held medical clinics in school buildings as you see here. This is a school building built by our construction team. You can see some of the children in their school uniforms as the crowd begins to form after word spreads that American doctors are here. These rural villages have had no doctor here since the last time that our group came…perhaps years ago.

Numerous Lima area medical offices and hospitals donate medications or funds to support the medical team. Some give their “Christmas exchange” money to the Haiti projects. Supplies are purchased through a medical mission agency to control our cost, but we always have to pay a random customs fee in Haiti. Often the customs agents simply take whatever they might want themselves.

In this photo Dr. David Imler and interpreter David are seeing a patient. Dr. and Mrs. Imler have stayed in contact with David over the years and David is now attending college here in the USA.

Here is a typical patient group. The mother has a growth on her neck which she tells us is due to a VooDoo curse. Both children need worming medications and the youngest is malnourished. We have learned that the best way to see the really ill people is to have someone in authority give out numbers before we come...almost always several children to a number.

After seeing what types of doctors are able to go each year to Haiti, we divide our medical staff into Women’s medicine, Children’s medicine, and General medicine. In this photo you see Dr. Jim Kahn with his son Steve, who at that time was applying to medical schools. They are seeing female patients and being helped with the language problem by our female missionary. Their “examining room” is inside a church. This examining room is formed with sheets dividing it from the next “examining room” for kids. It is usually 90 degrees outside and there is no air movement inside. One day the temperature registered almost 100 degrees where we were working.

This 2006 group photo is a typical medical team that we take to Haiti: physicians, nurses, and a few helper people who run the pharmacy, provide general crowd control, and entertain the children.

On a trip in 2005 we set up tables under a tree for our “pharmacy” near where our construction team was roofing a building. People just began arriving until there were hundreds. Here you see a nurse from our group taking the blood pressure of a church elder. Each location has their “special” people who we are to see first. We have to be careful to be sure we are politically correct so that our visits and work go smoothly. In the background, patients are just beginning to form lines to see a doctor. Each doctor is assigned an interpreter.

This little one’s name is “myLove” and she nearly broke our hearts. The first time we saw her she was four month’s old and only the size of a one month old. Her mother had died (we think from AIDS) and relatives were caring for her. They were getting some government formula, but we learned that they were watering it down to make it last….and of course not with sterile water either. We gave money to the pastor and instructed him that the baby had to have the full formula regularly to survive. Our doctors thought she would be dead in a few days. It was thrilling when this past year our medical team saw this child—she is healthy and thriving.

This little one has scabies and the mother is given medication to apply to it. It is suggested that the other children in the family probably need it also.

In this photo you see Dr. Kerry Forrestal. He was an ER doctor in Lima, but was our pediatrician in Haiti. His interpreter is a local pastor. The women behind them are in the waiting room line for Dr. Kahn.

This boy has kwashiorkor, a form of malnutrition caused by inadequate protein. Often we saw other symptoms such as reddish hair, but this one was very bad. Almost all of the children are given worming medication and vitamins.