New Orleanians pitch in to provide
medical aid for Haiti
By Katy Reckdahl, The Times-Picayune
January 23, 2010, 6:28PM
Early Saturday morning, Dr. Charles Rene,
a Haitian-born obstetrician-gynecologist,
hovered near a man loading a Haiti-bound
jet with boxes of IV fluids, antibiotics,
wound dressings and surgical tools. As it
became clear that the plane's belly could
not hold all the boxes, Rene switched some
around, making sure that the
highest-priority cartons made it aboard.
An 11-person medical team headed from
New Orleans to Haiti had worked through
the night in the Renes' living room to sort
the supplies.
Rene's wife, Sandra Birdsall-Rene, a native
New Orleanian and registered nurse, was
part of the team along with her husband
and nine others, most of them from Tulane
University Hospital: doctors Roger
Belizaire, Loreno Dumas-Gunter, Nicole
Michael, Daniel Nelson, Francisco Simeone
and Richard Vinroot; registered nurses
Diane Lyons and Madeline Mills-Dawson;
and electrical engineer Georges Laurent.
In order to save space in the plane for
supplies, most of the team took a
commercial flight to Santo Domingo, their
suitcases jammed with medical supplies.
Still, they could take only about one-tenth
of the supplies they'd assembled.
"We have to choose, but how do we
choose?" said Rene, as he picked through
boxes piled carefully into an orange moving
van. Many of the supplies left behind were
also essential, but couldn't make the trip.
For the past 20 years, Rene has regularly
led teams of doctors and nurses to Hospital
St. Joseph, which was built by the villagers
of La Vallee de Jacmel in southeast Haiti.
The latest team will be working out of the
hospital, which was undamaged.
On their last trip there, in November, the
doctors had unloaded a 42-foot container
of supplies to ensure that the
general-practice hospital was well-stocked
for their next visit, then scheduled for
February.
Then the Jan. 12 earthquake devastated not
only the country's capital, Port-au-Prince,
but also the city of Jacmel, near La Vallee.
Suddenly, there was a need to add items to
treat people with broken and twisted bones
or crushed abdomens and chests.
Rene said he agonized about how to
finance the unplanned flight and transport
the additional supplies. Help came from
businessman and mayoral candidate John
Georges, who was at the airport Saturday
morning but shrugged off reporters'
questions, pointing at Rene and his team
and saying, "There's the story."
If more donors step forward, Fenelle
Guillaume and other members of a local
group, the Haitian Association for Human
Development, will coordinate shipments,
Guillaume said.
More New Orleanians also have pitched in.
The medical team, as it screens the injured
in Jacmel, will operate out of a house in
that city secured last week by the Haiti
Emergency Village Project, a coalition of
nearly 40 local organizations led by Jacques
Morial of the Louisiana Justice Institute and
Charles Allen III of the Center for
Sustainable Engagement and Development,
which are working to link New Orleans
resources with needs in Haiti.
The jet was to fly to Santo Domingo,
where the team would reunite for a flight to
Jacmel and a drive to La Vallee. They'd
heard that 50 people with severely broken
bones already were waiting at Hospital St.
Joseph. Likely thousands more wait in
Jacmel.
Most members of the group have
committed to be in La Vallee for two
weeks, but Rene said he has set no return
date. "I don't know when I'm coming
back," he said.
Katy Reckdahl can be reached at
kreckdahl@timespicayune.com or
504.826.3396.