Conscience International

CONSCIENCE INTERNATIONAL is following up on its initial surgical mission to Haiti by sending two more medical teams of orthopedic surgeons to Port au Prince. One group left on January 27, along with a coordinator, and another five- person medical team arrived on January 28 in partnership with ServLife and Mission Haiti–Midwest. Among the items carried to Haiti by the medical teams are two truckloads of supplies, including much-needed external fixators and anesthesiology machines

Conscience International has already flown in $52,000 worth of medical supplies and life-saving medicines for delivery to the CLINIQUE MEDICALE DE CHRISTIANVILLE, near Port au Prince, headed by Dr. James Wilkins, Medical Director, and where Dr. Steve James, from Cap Haitien, has also been working.

But there is still a great need for supplies, which our shipment is designed to help relieve. To help support Conscience International’s work in Haiti, click on our HELP HAITI site.

To read more from Conscience International’s most recent medical teams to Haiti, check the links below:

Georgians working to organize doctors; Chattanooga Times Free Press; Chattannooga, Tennessee

Local surgeon fights to save lives in Haiti; Forsyth News; Cumming, Georgia

Humanitarians lend a hand in Haiti; Gainesville Times; Gainesville, Georgia

Read more at:

Georgians working to organize doctors; Chattanooga Times Free Press; Chattannooga, Tennessee

Local surgeon fights to save lives in Haiti; Forsyth News; Cumming, Georgia

Humanitarians lend a hand in Haiti; Gainesville Times; Gainesville, Georgia

Today’s issue of the Gainesville Times, Gainesville, Georgia, USA featured a story on the Conscience International team that recently returned from Haiti. In the interview CI President James Jennings PhD and Orthopedic Surgeon Dr. Michael Hogan talk about their experiences and observations in Haiti.

Dr. Michael Hogan examing a patient at the UN Field Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Concerning the severity of the earthquake:

James Jennings has responded to six of what he calls “complex emergencies.” He calls the earthquake in Haiti a complex emergency times two.

“Here, everything sort of came together,” Jennings said. “The level of the disaster, the magnitude of it, and then the population density and the poverty of the people. They had no resources, nothing that they could do.”

On the medical aspects:

“We got in there fairly early, and our doctors — one doctor, Michael Hogan, the orthopedic surgeon — went to work within 15 minutes of when we got there,” Jennings said.

Hogan worked at a field hospital in the United Nations compound next to the airport. He and other doctors operated on patients lying on folding tables, partitioned by hospital gowns.

Most of the work he did was amputations, Jennings said. Crush injuries become infected with gangrene. The doctors work first to save the life; then if they can, they save the limb and if possible, they save the function of the limb.

Jennings estimated that Hogan spent about half an hour to an hour on each patient.

“They would bring one in — I helped carry them in and out. And they would bring one in, take one out, bring one in, take one out, bring one in,” Jennings said.

“He just worked flat out for 15 hours and slept three hours in a chair and started all over again.”

Hogan applauded the work of anesthesiologists who had no machines, but used nerve blocks and intravenous drugs to treat pain.

“They did just an outstanding job,” Hogan said. “We didn’t lose any of our operative patients.”

On the psychological respect:

“It’s unbelievable just the devastation. What a calamity,” he said. “And for the people. Everybody that you talk with, their life has been affected by it. ‘My mother was killed.’ ‘My sister was killed.’ ‘My 7-year-old child.’ ‘I’m wounded,’ you know.

“You can’t see on a 21-inch screen what the scope of the devastation is. And certainly the smells — and the flies.”
Read the full story at the Gainesville Times.