Oklahoma Sooners In Haiti

Almost Three Weeks After It Hit, It  Still Hurts

       We've all seen the horrible pictures of the devastation and death in the aftermath of Haiti's magnitude 7.0 earthquake. If you're like most people, you want to do something, so you send money or gather items to be sent by churches, the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations that already have teams on the ground in that country.

If you had a skill that could be useful in this kind of disaster, you might even find a way to go and volunteer. That's just what two University of Oklahoma Sooners did. Steve Smith, Dr. Steve Smith, a Doctor of Family Medicine just return from helping hundreds of people on the island of Haiti. Dr. Smith is no stranger to this type of emergency, but even he was amazed at the destruction.

“I’ve handled a few mission trips to Africa and another earthquake in Indonesia but this was like World War II,” Smith said. “I only arrived when we were in the middle of the second week out from the quake and it still looked bad.” Dr. Smith said he along with some other medical personnel made the flight into the Dominican Republic, then they drove into Haiti at night to be ready to take care of patients in the morning.

Dr. Smith was with a team that included five resident physicians, two nurses, one trauma surgeon and an orthopedic surgeon. They were able to take care of 320 to 340 hurting people a day. Sometimes there would be as many as 500 people waiting outside the clinic. After all they've been through the Haitian people were hopeful. “The people there are so gracious and it was very humbling,” Smith said.

There were a lot of different injuries and ailments that the team had to deal with. Among them were malnutrition, high blood pressure, worms and diabetes. They even witnessed some people trying to doctor themselves. The building they were working in was part of a heavily damaged school turned into a clinic by the Salvation Army.

As he walked around and saw the devastation he said, “I saw things I’ve never seen before.” When we passed some collapsed buildings, people told us that the floor we were looking at was actually from the third floor and there were two more stories pancaked underneath. We also saw babies and other children who had lost their parents.

Dr. Smith has returned and another Oklahoma University doctor will be taking his place. Dr. David Teague is an orthopedic surgeon and will have a slightly different mission in Haiti. He will handle more serious injuries on U.S. Naval Ship Comfort docked right off of the coast of Port-au-Prince. We are proud of these two University of Oklahoma doctors and the many volunteers in Haiti.

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