If you’re wondering how to help in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, here’s one excellent outfit: I just returned from there, where I served as a volunteer for a medical mission at Hospital Sacre Coeur, a 73-bed facility in Milot, Haiti, founded by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, Montreal Province, in 1986. Our team collaborated on medical training and surgeries with an excellent Haitian staff at this top hospital. Even so, the physicians and nurses faced more than a few hurdles: No pathology lab, CT Scans, or MRIs to improve patient assessment, and voodoo practices that resulted in serious injuries and discouraged vital treatment. During that week, the toughest call was the decision to delay surgery for a woman with a large and growing tumor that might soon cut off her oxygen supply. The ingenuity and perseverance of Sacre Coeur’s first full-time general surgeon, Dr. Jerry Bernard, and the stoic composure of the Haitians patiently waiting their turn, moved us all. Now Bernard and his hospital will be tested even further as the already-crowded facility prepares for an influx of patients from the capital.

Dr. Bernard has confirmed that the hospital is secure and the staff unharmed. Additional medical teams are on their way to Milot. Plans to install an echo cardiogram may be set aside and the visitors will scramble to treat immediate needs. Dr. Richard Perry, a Maryland internist, expects to see “beds in the halls and lengthened hours of outpatient clinics.” Project Hope expects to begin airlifting patients to the hospital, and a tented facility will be established.

Check it out at www.crudem.org.

– Joan Frawley Desmond is a Catholic journalist and member of the Order of Malta that supports the Hospital Sacre Coeur.