Volunteer medical team treats injured people in Haiti
The St. Thomas Aquinas Parish Haiti Committee in Indianapolis organized a medical mission to Port-au-Prince on Feb. 13-20 to help care for Haitians injured in the Jan. 12 earthquake. Volunteer medical team members from central Indiana are, left to right, Dr. Stephen Zentner, physical therapist Lois Zentner, Haiti Committee member and mission organizer Joseph Zelenka, registered nurse Kathy Williams, Dr. Tom Williams, pharmacist Ashley Vincent, Dr. Terry Ihnat, registered nurse Rita Ward, registered nurse Chris Sheehan and Dr. Pearl Johnson. (Photo by Mary Ann Wyand)
By Mary Ann Wyand
A month after the catastrophic Jan. 12 earthquake near Port-au-Prince, 10 members of a volunteer medical team organized by the St. Thomas Aquinas Parish Haiti Committee in Indianapolis were busy caring for injured Haitians at St. Damien’s Children’s Hospital outside the ruins of the capital city.
The pediatric hospital located near the airport only sustained minor damage during the 7.0 magnitude quake and is being used for emergency medical care.
St. Thomas Aquinas parishioner Joseph Zelenka of Indianapolis, who organized the Feb. 13-20 medical mission trip, called his wife, Sharel, on Feb. 14 to report that they arrived in the Dominican Republic on a flight from Philadelphia and traveled from there to Port-au-Prince.
Zelenka worked with Father Rick Frechette, an American priest who also is a physician and the hospital director, on travel arrangements to bring the medical team into the disaster area.
On Jan. 15, Father Frechette told an ABC News reporter in Haiti that medical personnel at the pediatric hospital were providing acute medical care for adults and children with severe crush injuries and open fractures.
During a Feb. 6 Criterion interview, Zelenka said the St. Thomas medical team received financial support from many parishioners, who have been “unbelievably generous,” as well as donations of medicine and supplies for wound care from St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis.
“We had planned this medical trip to St. Jean Marie Parish in Belle Riviere almost four months ago,” he said. “Our plans changed because the real need is in Port-au-Prince. I’m not sure how I’m going to respond when I see the rubble and so many injured people. It’s beyond all comprehension.
“We’ve been told by Father Rick Frechette’s staff at St. Damien’s Hospital to be prepared to do a lot of wound care,” Zelenka said. “I received e-mail reports that some doctors in Haiti had to do a lot of amputations without anesthesia to save people’s lives because their limbs were mangled and infection sets in quickly.”
The rainy season is only a few weeks away, he said, and Haitians are afraid to seek shelter in any buildings still standing because they are wary of more aftershocks.
“Diseases will be a major problem,” Zelenka said. “People are sleeping in the streets, and there are feces and urination on the ground. Those who were not injured were returning to the provinces where they came from, and those [areas] are overcrowded now. Small huts that house two or three people are now housing 10 people.”
He planned to stay in Haiti after the other Indianapolis area volunteers returned home on Feb. 20 to visit Father Valery Rebecca and inspect Visitation Hospital in Petite Riviere de Nippes. He also hopes to travel to Belle Riviere to assess damage to the parish buildings there, and volunteer at St. Clare Church in Port-au-Prince.
“They are feeding thousands of people every day,” Zelenka said. “I want to go there and help. I also want to try to find Jean Lys [Lorthe], the boy we brought to Indianapolis three years ago for heart surgery. I’m really concerned about Jean Lys because the last I knew he was living with two older sisters in Carrefour, which is just outside of
Port-au-Prince. If he was there, that was the epicenter of the earthquake. I may not be able to find out anything about him.”
A week before their departure, the medical team received a blessing followed by enthusiastic applause from parishioners at the conclusion of Mass on Feb. 7 at St. Thomas Aquinas Church.
“The Haiti ministry is very much a part of St. Thomas [Parish],” Father Stephen Schwab, the pastor, said after the Mass. “The parishioners have an extraordinary commitment to the people of Haiti. It’s very inspiring to have some of our parishioners on the front line helping the Haitian people. This is something I think they feel that they have to do.”
This medical mission marked Dr. Terry Ihnat’s 10th trip to Haiti.
The surgeon and member of Sacred Heart Parish in Cicero, Ind., in the Lafayette Diocese, said the medical team is eager to help with the critical needs there.
“Whatever they’ve got for us to do, we’ll do it,” Ihnat said. “There are so many things they need. When we get there, it will be obvious what we need to do. I say a prayer every day to help the people of Haiti. They’re such a faith-filled people. They know that God is going to provide for them.
“Haiti has been ignored for so long,” he said. “This disaster has really opened a lot of people’s eyes—and their hearts. If any good comes out of this earthquake, it will be the fact that people are aware of the needs there now and how they have been suffering for years. Maybe they will get some much-needed help.”
Parishioner Stephen Zentner, a family practice physician, has participated in 16 medical missions to Haiti. His wife, Lois Zentner, a physical therapist, has traveled there 15 times on mission trips.
“Haiti is so poor,” he said. “The people have nothing to begin with, and then this [earthquake] happens. But even in a disaster, they still have faith in God. I always pray for the people of Haiti. We are going to try to do the most we can in the short time we will be there.”
Parishioner Chris Sheehan, a registered nurse who has traveled to Haiti on five medical mission trips, said her daily prayer is “that each person in Haiti receives what he or she needs most that day, which is different for everybody. Some days it might be food and water. Sometimes it might be health care. Sometimes it might be shelter from the elements. The people have so little and now they have nothing.
“A lot of prayers will get us through this,” Sheehan said. “The trip had already been planned, and I think it worked out that we were supposed to go there now to help the people who didn’t receive adequate treatment in the days after the earthquake.”
(Log on to The Criterion Web site at www.archindy.org/criterion/local/2006/10-06/haiti.html to read John Shaughnessy’s story about Jean Lys Lorthe’s heart surgery in 2006 at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis.) †
