Helping Haiti: Local doctors lend a hand to earthquake victims

It is hard to imagine worse odds. The child was born six weeks early and with a variety of serious complications.

While any infant arrival of that sort poses medical challenges, this one took place in Haiti a week after the devastating earthquake.

Dan Towle, a Leawood anesthesiologist with Children’s Mercy Hospital, was among the volunteer medical staffers in Leogane, Haiti, who helped provide care to the ailing newborn.

It was the assignment that “said it all” about his experience in the country, Towle said.

The medical team decided to fly child and mother out by helicopter to a hospital better able to handle treatment.

“It was a surreal feeling riding in the back of that Marine helicopter with ammunition separating mom and me,” Towle said.

The medical efforts would not be enough.

“We did the best we could, but the child died in my arms,” Towle said.

Haitians do not believe in touching the dead if it can be avoided, so the mother never came in contact with or saw her child again, he said.

“It was not because she didn’t care, but she walked away from the helicopter alone because she couldn’t afford to bury her child,” Towle said.

He and fellow Children’s Mercy doctor Catherine Powers returned Saturday from a 10-day stint in Leogane.

Powers also is a Leawood resident and an anesthesiologist.

While both primarily worked in their specialty, they also provided a variety of other care and treatment.

Powers said they probably saw about 120 patients.

Emergency doctors, she said, probably were caring for 200 to 300 people a day.

Leogane, a city of about 150,000 located 45 minutes south of Port-au-Prince, was at the epicenter of the earthquake, they said.

The doctors made the trip through the efforts of the University of Notre Dame and InterVol, a medical relief organization.

Within two hours of arrival, Powers and Towle participated in their first surgery. For a while they were the only two anesthesiologists on site.

They slept seldom because of the constant flow of patients into the emergency medical facility established at a Notre Dame research center and nursing school.

Three operating rooms were set up in offices and dormitories of the school.

“We worked as long as there was electricity and the generators were working,” Towle said.

Powers said she was touched and impressed by the Haitian people.

“They are a very strong people. They are quiet and reserved and very thankful for the service we provided,” Powers said. “We are really honored to have been able to go with this group and go early.”

Because of the scope of the injuries and devastation, the doctors know that the needs will not be fully met for a long time.

“They need six months to medically recover, and they probably need 10 years to recover as a country,” Powers said.

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