Doctors Without Borders Face Haiti Earthquake Damage To Volunteer in Haiti

Doctors Without Borders went to face the extensive Haiti earthquake damage. With countless people injured and homeless, Doctors Without Borders will need more medical professionals to volunteer in Haiti.

Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) were some of the first to respond to the Haiti earthquake damage from the 7.0 quake on January 12, 2010. According to Fox News, Paul McPhun, the operation director of MSF Haiti, said, “Where we are focusing our energy is on the rapid influx of patients from neighborhoods who know of our services. The best we can offer them at the moment is first aid careand stabilization.”

Doctors Without Borders had 800 medical staff in Haiti with three areas of serve in Port au Prince for emergency care. All of the centers are extremely damaged and cannot be used to treat patients from the Haiti earthquake damage. Tents are set up to care for severely injured victims. At this point, 800 to 950 people have already received treatment thanks to Doctors Without Borders.

Stepheno Zannini, a senior MSF staff member, stated in a news release, “I visited five medical centers, including a major hospital, and most of them were not functioning. Many are damaged and I saw a distressing number of dead bodies. Some parts of the city are without electricity, and people have gathered outside, lighting fires in the street and trying to help and comfort each other."

Hans van Dillen, MSF coordinator, said in a news release, “There are hundreds of thousands of people who are sleeping in the streets because they are homeless. We see open fractures, head injuries. The problem is that we cannot forward people to proper surgery at this stage."

McPhun indicated, “We’re currently putting rapid response plans into place based out of North America and Europe. We should have another 70 international staff available over the next few days with specialties available to respond to these more immediate medical emergency needs."

To read more about Doctors Without Borders facing Haiti earthquake damage and the need to work or volunteer in Haiti, visit Fox News.

This YouTube video is about Doctors Without Borders: