University of Miami helps survivors in Haiti

How wonderful to see that the University of Miami physician staff is still jumping up to the plate to help so many survivors in Haiti.

To improve continuity of care, medical volunteers heading to Haiti to work in the Miller School’s rapid response hospital or elsewhere are being asked to serve at least five days. By mid-February, they may be asked to stay at least a week.

The longer deployments come as the UM Global Institute’s Haiti Relief Task Force, the tireless cadre of doctors, administrators, staff, and volunteers who are working non-stop to coordinate the massive medical mission, settle in for the long haul. On Tuesday, the task force was moving from the Lois Pope LIFE Center to new quarters at the Medical Training and Simulation Lab.

Though University of Miami/Jackson physicians, nurses, and other personnel have helped save hundreds of lives since Barth Green, professor and chair of neurological surgery, led the first medical team to the devastated capital a day after the January 12 quake, tens of thousands of survivors still need immediate and long-term care. The threat of widespread secondary infections and other epidemics from unsanitary conditions also hovers on the horizon.

At the group’s daily briefing, Green ticked off an ever-growing list of needs at the urgent care hospital the University opened last week at the edge of the Port-au-Prince airport. Among them: a multi-slice CT scanner, dialysis units, and crutches and prosthetics for the countless Haitians whose limbs were crushed by collapsing buildings and have endured or will undergo amputations.

“Children and adults are dying every day because there are no dialysis machines in Haiti,’’ said Green, who co-founded Project Medishare to improve health care access in Haiti after a medical mission to the impoverished country in 1994. “In Haiti, if you can’t walk, you can’t get anywhere.’’

He also said the University is helping set up interim camps for hundreds of post-op patients no longer requiring acute care. Even if they are stable enough to be released, many have nowhere to go, nor any idea if their families are still alive, complicating the many challenges at the hospital.

Likewise, the University is working with Haitian orphanages to place post-op children without known family and is enlisting U.S. hospitals outside Florida, which has received the lion’s share of survivors brought to the U.S., to accept spinal cord and burn patients.

“The hospitals are willing to take them,’’ Green said. “We just need ways to fly them directly.’’

While some of the Miller School’s orthopaedic surgeons and neurosurgeons have been dispatched to the U.S. Navy hospital ship, USNS Comfort, to treat trauma patients there, the University has few nurses to spare, especially Creole-speakers able to communicate with frightened Haitian patients.

To ease the burden, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist signed an executive order on Monday allowing licensed nurses from other states to work in Florida for the next three months. Sought by nursing, hospital and union officials, the temporary measure is designed to help South Florida hospitals accommodate the many Haitian nurses on staff who yearn to return to their homeland to render assistance but, due to the ongoing nursing shortage, are unable to obtain leave because their skills are needed here. The out-of-state nurses would temporarily take the place of nurses who want to follow their hearts to Haiti.

“With that kind of plea I don’t know how to say no, so what I’m going to do is sign that order and to thank these wonderful people for their… kindness and their willingness to share their talents with our neighbors,” Crist said at a Monday afternoon news conference at Jackson’s Ryder Trauma Center.

In addition to health care professionals, especially Creole-speaking nurses, who can assist in Haiti, raising money for the UM Global Institute to support the University’s doctors, nurses and students in Haiti remains a priority. You may make an online donation directly to the Global Institute or send a check made out to the “University of Miami-Global Institute” to P.O. Box 248073, Coral Gables, Florida, 33124.

Thank you all for your continued support.

Personal blog from Cindy will be coming soon.