LI doctors reflect on Haiti's rebuilding
![Dr. Micheline Dole gives medicine to a young girl in...](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.newsday.com%2Fimage-service%2Fversion%2Fc%3AZGEwODMwYWMtNTg0OC00%3AYWMtNTg0OC00MTBiZDE5%2Fhaiti.jpg%3Ff%3DLandscape%2B16%253A9%26w%3D770%26q%3D1&w=1920&q=80)
Dr. Micheline Dole gives medicine to a young girl in pediatric tent at General Hospital in Port au Prince, Haiti. (Jan. 28, 2010) Credit: Newsday
Sadness. Frustration. Dismay.
One year after an earthquake in Haiti, Long Island doctors who volunteered their time and services are pained by the slow pace of recovery.
"It's sad. After all this time, nothing concrete has happened, nothing positive," said internist Dr. Lionel LeFevre of Huntington, one of 13 members of a medical team from Long Island who arrived in Haiti two weeks after the Jan. 12, 2010, quake.
"It's been one disaster after another and the worst of all, there doesn't seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel, not even a flicker," said Dr. L.D. George Angus, 55, of Northport, a general surgeon in trauma and critical care at Nassau University Medical Center, who was also part of the relief effort sponsored by the Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad.
The organization, headquartered in Brooklyn with chapters in the United States and Canada, remains deeply involved in offering aid to Haiti. In the early, chaotic days, the doctors treated a stream of injured, infected and ailing patients. Since then, they have returned to Haiti, gathered and sent supplies, equipped operating rooms, raised money and organized relief efforts from Long Island.
"It hasn't left my mind," said Dr. Louis Auguste, a surgical oncologist at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, who arrived in Haiti days after the quake as part of another emergency medical team, and then returned in May.
"We've had collections of medical supplies, dressings, medications," including salt tablets and antibiotics sent to cholera treatment centers, said Auguste, 61, of Great Neck.
The association has sent 500 medical professionals, including almost 60 from Long Island, both to the devastated capital city Port-au-Prince, and to cities outside the quake zone, said Dr. Bernard Poulard of Dix Hills, a surgeon. Added Dr. Paul Nacier, 59, of Nassau County, who went to remote Anse-a-Pitre in November, "Of course the focus is on Port-au-Prince, but everywhere you go there is a need."
The needs haven't diminished since the quake that killed about 250,000, injured 300,000 and left 1.3 million homeless. Flooding, a cholera epidemic and violence followed. Rubble remains where it fell. The Presidential Palace and the Cathedral in Port-au-Prince still sit in ruins.
"I cannot say myself what I've accomplished because the problem is so vast," said Nassau University Medical Center pediatrician Dr. Micheline Dole, 60, who went to Haiti last January and is now helping to organize an April 2 fundraiser at the Marriott Hotel in Uniondale.
She does see progress from the immediate aftermath of the quake: Cadavers no longer lie in the streets; most homeless have some sort of shelter.
But with swathes of the country still in ruins, and much of the promised aid slow to materialize, expecting quick results is unrealistic, she said.
"I don't think any country, regardless of the type of government, could do that on their own in one year," she said. Angus, however, put some blame on Haiti's "bad governance."
Meanwhile, Auguste complained that some of the aid agencies are competing with the services once provided by Haitian institutions, rather than working through them, and that some hospitals have gone bankrupt.
He'd been planning to go back to Haiti in a month or two but was called back last week to attend his brother's funeral.
"We've definitely helped," Auguste said before he left last week. "But I really don't think we've made a radical change. The system is going to need help for a long time on a grand scale."
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