Update from Henri Ford, MD (received January 24, 7:52 p.m.)

Dr. Ford’s Brothers . . . “Siblings work to heal Haiti” “This afternoon, I had a chance to visit my 2 other brothers, also physicians (pulmonologist and anesthesiologist) who came to help out as well.CNN interviewed them the other day. They are working with Project Medishare on the United Nations Compound. In fact, Unfortunately, I was too busy to join them in their medical camp.” Watch the CNN Footage

“Greetings from Port-au-Prince!

In addition to our continued efforts to provide medical and surgical care for patients, we are making great progress working out the logistics for delivering food and other humanitarian goods to the community that we are serving.

Today, the Gheskio clinic provided hygienic goods to the 5,000-strong tent community on our grounds.  We enlisted the Haitian police to help in this endeavor.  It went well.

The next objective is to distribute food to the starving people.

A new team from the Department of Health and Human Services arrived today to replace the other team that was deployed with us.  To my delight, several friends and colleagues from the Trauma community arrived on that team, including the head of the team.  Having colleagues and friends as part of the team should make it easier to come up with a more comprehensive plan for the humanitarian engagement that needs to take place in Haiti.

Our current plan is to traverse the tent city tomorrow to inventory the number of people and their living conditions.  We can’t provide them quality care and then return them to living conditions that return them to ill health.  I will keep you posted on these efforts.

The surgical supplies are coming, but they are being depleted almost immediately because the need is so vast.  Every humanitarian medical camp we visit suffers from the same challenges.  Just when we thought that we had resolved the problem with the supply issues, we realize that we probably underestimated the need…

I’m hopeful that I can help optimize care coordination issues this week and try to do some skin grafts for some of my patients with complex wounds before I leave this coming weekend.  I will make sure that there will be a plastic surgeon to follow through after I’m gone.

Thanks to everyone for their continued support.

Henri Ford, M.D.”

Similar Posts:

• Volunteer Team #2 Departs & Haiti Conditions Update
• Dr. Henri Ford Returns From Haiti
• Medical Outreach in Port-au-Prince
• Camp Fixer
• Moving to Gheskio Clinic

Filed under: Doctors, Haiti, Health Professionals, Henri Ford on January 25th, 2010