Melissa Greer
News Reporter
After spending three weeks in Haiti treating victims of last month’s earthquake, nursing professor John Stone returned to Humber this week.
Stone was with a team of Canadian medical professional volunteers who treated up to 200 patients a day at a field clinic in rural Leogane, a coastal town west of Port-au-Prince that was hit hard by the Jan. 12 quake.
“There were a lot of fractures and amputations – a lot of surgeries,” said Stone, who is also a registered nurse.
He was among a team of 11: an orthopedic surgeon, an anesthetist, an emergency physician, two nurse practitioners, two paramedics and four nurses.
Nursing Professor John Stone travelled to Haiti with a team of Canadian medical professionals to treat victims of the Jan. 12 earthquake.
“We basically worked a day-clinics’ hours, from 8 a.m. until 4 or 5 p.m., but we were around every evening as well and usually about every other evening we’d have some emergency come in, like machete cuts or road accidents.”
They arrived Jan. 31, to relieve a similar group, also members of Canadian Medical Assistance Teams, a non-profit NGO based in Brantford, Ont., that provides assistance to disaster victims around the world.
Stone previously travelled with the organization to Pakistan after an earthquake in 2005.
In Haiti, his team was equipped with medical supplies, food, water and tents for shelter.
They operated out of a tent, with patients sprawled on a stretcher laid across concrete blocks.
After the first couple of days, Stone said there were fewer surgeries and more post-operative care.
“There were a number of people in casts and what we call external fixators for broken bones, which are metal rods that literally protrude from the side of the leg to stabilize the wound until it heals,” he said.
Other rehabilitation specialists will replace Stone’s team in Leogane to assist people who have had amputations or broken bones.
“The focus gets to be what you are going to do when you get the casts and splints off because there are complications – you can’t just put the cast on and then say ‘good luck.’”
As for Stone, he called the experience “very rewarding – and you hope you’ve helped a little bit in some way.”
[...] February 27, 2010 at 12:58 pm (Et Cetera, Human Interest, News) (Canadian Medical Assistance Teams, earthquake, Haiti, John Stone, Leogane, nursing) My article for the Feb. 24, 2010 Humber Et Cetera: [...]