FEB 16: QUEENS NY VOLUNTEER DOCTOR SAYS REHAB CENTER FOR HAITIAN AMPUTEES IS URGENT, DAILY NEWS

full article via

DAILY NEWS
Plea To Aid Haiti Amputees Boro Doc Says Victims In Need Of Rehab Center
By Clare Trapasso

Days after an earthquake wrought destruction on his parents' homeland, a Springfield Gardens doctor and a team of fellow Haitian-American physicians arrived in Haiti, armed with suitcases stuffed with medical supplies.

While Dr. William Gibbs, 40, attended to a never-ending stream of human misery, an idea came to him.

Gibbs said he became convinced that Haiti needed a rehabilitation center for the nation's new amputees - estimated to be at least 2,000 people, according to the World Health Organization.

He enlisted support from the Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad, to which he belongs.

"I had problems discharging patients because they're homeless, there was a lack of medication and there was going to be a lack of followup," said Gibbs, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist at New York Hospital Queens in Flushing.

"We're afraid they're going to die if we discharge them without followup appointments," Gibbs said. He compared the dearth of high-tech medical equipment to what he imagined Civil War doctors had to work with.

Patients with broken legs arrived in wheelbarrows from as far as 10 miles away, he said. After every aftershock, patients would injure themselves further by jumping out of their beds to escape the shaking walls of the hospital.

To make matters worse, many amputations were done with rudimentary tools after the quake to prevent deaths from infections, he said. Those patients need further surgery, so that prosthetic limbs can be attached. Then they need rehab.

Gibbs envisions creating an institute where local professionals are trained to treat amputees, construct and fit prosthetics and perform physical therapy. The association is firmly behind its creation.

"[These] are people who, without any rehabilitation effort, are doomed to become beggars," said Dr. Louis Auguste, president of the association's New York chapter. "Without this rehabilitation, they'll never get a chance to get back to mainstream life."

The group has been in frequent contact with medical teams in Haiti and is collecting money for the institute.

Gibbs has also reached out for donations from companies that supply prosthetics. He plans to go back to Haiti this spring.

"I'm still in fact-finding mode," said Gibbs, who is continuing work on the logistics of the institute. But he vowed that "this year, something's going to happen."

It couldn't happen soon enough for Dr. Evan Lyon.

The Alabama physician has done extensive work in Haiti over the last decade, and returned following the harrowing quake.

"The need is fairly urgent," Lyon said of the rehabilitation institute. "Haiti as a nation just doesn't have much expertise in terms of physical rehabilitation medicine."

Visit www.amhe.org to donate.