José Limson and his daughter, Janelle, display some of the 11 bags of shoes the girl helped to collect for the people of Haiti. She contributed the donated shoes to a drive held at Chicago's Resurrection Health Care. In all, the health system's drive brought in more than 500 pairs of shoes, which the nonprofit Share Your Soles organization will provide to people in Haiti. José Limson is a nurse at Resurrection's Saint Francis Hospital in Evanston, Ill.
Volunteers help to load donated medical supplies into a shipping container destined for Haiti. Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital in Santa Rosa, Calif, is among 25 Northern California hospitals that provide surplus medical supplies to MedShare so that the relief organization can distribute the equipment to medical providers and mission teams in need overseas. (Photo courtesy of MedShare.
Crews in Port-au-Prince help to unload medical supplies that Santa Rosa Memorial and other Northern California hospitals donated via MedShare. MedShare has collected more than 67 tons of medical supplies for medical providers in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. Santa Rosa donated more than 4,100 pounds of supplies.
A child at Saint Damien Hospital in Port-au-Prince, shows off the dinosaur sticker on his forehead. Saint Damien is among the Haiti health care facilities that received MedShare equipment donations post-earthquake.
Dr. Melissa Stein with patients
_Dr. Melissa Stein, a physician with St. Anthony's Medical Center Urgent Care Centers, prepares to treat a Haitian infant who is not eating, as the baby's family and a caregiver looks on. Stein spent two weeks in Haiti as part of a disaster recovery team. They treated quake victims in Gheskio, a camp affected by the earthquake.
Stein said this earthquake victim had been rescued from the rubble 16 days after the quake..
George Contreras, a paramedic with St. Vincent's Midtown Hospital in New York, at left, helps to transport a patient near a makeshift clinic around Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Contreras was one of six St. Vincent's paramedics who traveled to the country post-quake with the NYC Medics group to provide aid.
Contreras, at left, helps to staff a night clinic at a Port-au-Prince-area hospital.
Contreras visits with children in the slums and tent city in Cite Soleil, near Port-au-Prince.
Kristen Kennedy, a student at Bon Secours Memorial College of Nursing in Richmond, Va., at right, assesses a patient at a clinic in Haiti. Recognizing that health care needs in the villages outside of the earthquake zone did not disappear when the quake hit, a group of nine nursing students, faculty and alumnae from the college stuck with plans made before the quake to undertake a medical mission trip to the central northern plateau of Haiti.
Bon Secours Memorial clinicians and others walk the two-mile stretch to a clinic in Naran, Haiti.i.
Bon Secours nursing students Kristen Kennedy, at left, and Trevi Wilson, at center, pose with a group of earthquake survivors who they befriended in a tent city in Pandiousou, Haiti. A change in travel plans had placed the nursing students in accommodations next to the tent city.
Volunteers from Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, La., show off the shipping container full of food and supplies they helped to collect at the hospital, for quake survivors. They shipped the 40-foot container to Haiti in early March.
Dr. Daniel Ivankovich, of Saints Mary and Elizabeth Medical Center in Chicago, talks with a patient in Haiti. Ivankovich, an orthopedic surgeon, traveled to Haiti in January as part of a team of doctors, physician assistants, nurses and paramedics. He helped to bring two paralyzed spinal cord patients to Chicago for care. He plans to return to Haiti to provide more assistance.
Saints Mary and Elizabeth Medical Center Physician Assistant Tom Rosen helps transport a group of spinal cord patients in Haiti. He was part of the team that went to the quake-ravaged country in January.
Leaders from Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire, Wis., and St. Joseph's Hospital in Chippewa Falls, Wis., assemble kits of items they donated for Haitian quake survivors. The kits -- filled with toothbrushes, towels, combs and other hygiene items -- will reach Haiti via Hospital Sisters Mission Outreach.
Hospital leaders sort personal hygiene items bound for Haiti.
Clergy members celebrate a Mass as they bury the unknown dead in Titanyen, Haiti. Sisters and priests have overseen many mass burials in the weeks since the quake, according to Project Haiti, an aid program supported by Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, Idaho.
Two sisters attend the funeral Mass.
A man who sustained a severe femur injury in the earthquake embraces the physician who saved his leg. The surgeon is Dr. Steven Schutzer, co-medical director of the Connecticut Joint Replacement Institute at Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, Conn. Schutzer was one of several Saint Francis clinicians who traveled to the island to provide aid. Saint Francis also helped by collecting food for the people of Haiti.
Staff of St. Anthony's Medical Center in St. Louis dish up a "pauper's meal" of soup and bread to raise funds for earthquake victims. Diners purchased their meals for $5. The Ash Wednesday fund-raiser netted $1,100. In the foreground from left are St. Anthony's Sr. Sandra Straub, CSJ, director of mission integration; Gary Holzen, manager of nutrition and retail services; and Linda Seffens, director of nutrition services.
A quake victim receives medical attention in the courtyard of Hospital St. Francis de Sales in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Catholic Health East of Newtown Square, Pa., and others had helped to construct facilities at Hospital St. Francis de Sales prior to the quake and vowed to help repair damage caused by the temblor.
Volunteers sort medical supply donations at the Hospital Sisters Mission Outreach warehouse in Springfield.
Bruce Compton, president and chief executive of Hospital Sisters Mission Outreach of Springfield, Ill., coordinates the shipment of donations for Haiti from medical product manufacturers and hospitals. As of Feb. 8, Mission Outreach had shipped about 100 tons of aid valued at more than $1.6 million to Haiti.
A crew loads medical supplies donated by Sisters of Mercy Health System of St. Louis for a Feb. 6 flight to Haiti. The supplies — valued at around $55,000 – are bound for Hospital Sacre Coeur in Milot, Haiti. The Sisters of Mercy already had donated an additional $200,000 in supplies for earthquake relief.
Dr. Anthony Coletta, chief medical officer of Holy Redeemer Health System in Meadowbrook, Pa., poses with a young patient whose X-ray notes are taped to his forehead. In the absence of the computers or a charting system, doctors attach instructions on their patients. Coletta, an experience medical missionary, is among the first wave of medical responders from the U.S. (His firsthand account of conditions is included in Haiti Dispatches on this webpage.)
Kay St. Germaine, a rehabilitation and physiotherapy center near Saint Damien, was pressed into service as a nursery for abandoned special needs infants and pediatric patients. Kay St. Germaine is supported by an Italian aid agency that also supports Fr. Frechette, Saint Damien's founder. Here, a caregiver at Kay St. Germaine tends to an infant.
Saint Damien is providing care to quake victims of all ages, but most patients are children.
A U.S. surgeon checks on a patient at Saint Damien. As of Feb. 1, the hospital was housing about 210 pediatric patients and 30 adult patients. Much of the focus at this time is on providing post-op care to children with amputations.
A medical team tends to a quake victim at Saint Damien Hospital. Surgeons from the U.S. and Italy set up three operating rooms and were performing about 20 surgeries per day in early February. Saint Damien and its founder Fr. Rick Frechette are supported by Project Haiti, an aid program of Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, Idaho.
Haitians gather outside Saint Damien Hospital, a pediatric hospital in Port-au-Prince that is treating quake victims of all ages.
A Grey Nun with teaching, nursing and administrator experience, Sr. Mary Finnick, directs the Matthew 25 hospitality house in Port-au-Prince. Immediately after the quake, she helped to transform a soccer field near Matthew 25 into a triage area and scrounged for supplies to aid the wounded. Sr. Finnick's e-mails to her congregation tell of chaos and horror in the quake's aftermath and of the inspiring resilience of the Haitian people.
Haiti-bound caregivers gather after a blessing ceremony at Mercy Health Partners of Knoxville, Tenn. The team arrived in Haiti in early February.
Sr. Maryann Berard, OSF, gives candy to children in Jeremie, Haiti, a village about 100 miles west of Port-au-Prince. A nurse who served at St. Joseph's Hospital of Chippewa Falls, Wis., in the 1980s, she now works with the Haitian Health Foundation. Since the earthquake, Sr. Berard assists people who have fled to smaller villages outside the quake zone.
Children injured in the earthquake display their resilience at the Hospital Sacre Coeur. Caritas clinicians working at the hospital report that patients remain in good spirits despite their ordeal.
Patients await treatment in a makeshift holding area near Hospital Sacre Coeur in Milot. Using all available space, the hospital grew its capacity more than four-fold in less than a week.
The surgical team at Hospital Sacre Coeur tends to a child injured in the quake.
A helicopter crew transports an incoming patient to Hospital Sacre Coeur. Seven to eight helicopters circled between Milot and the earthquake zone, bringing dozens of critically injured patients each day.
Dr. Mark Pearlmutter, head of emergency medicine for Caritas Christi Health Care of Brighton, Mass., tends to a quake victim in a tent hospital on the grounds of Hospital Sacre Coeur in Milot, Haiti. He was one of 20 clinicians from throughout the Caritas system who joined other U.S. responders at the facility. The team helped to transform the 73-bed hospital into a makeshift trauma center capable of treating hundreds of people at once.
Anesthesiologist Dr. Jean Max Hogarth, at left, and orthopedic technician Tony Chotikul — both of St. Joseph Medical Center of Towson, Md. — prepare to travel to Haiti Jan. 20 as part of a team of U.S. surgeons caring for quake victims. The two men and a colleague brought along medical supplies donated by St. Joseph. Hogarth was born in Haiti and has relatives who still live there.