On Jan. 12, Denise English, PT, felt a big shake. She was checking her e-mail in the library of Hopital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles, Haiti, 40 miles northwest of Port-au-Prince. The trip wasn’t out of the ordinary for her. English, who is from the Pittsburgh area, is project director for Health Volunteers Overseas, a group that partners with overseas hospitals and facilities to provide education-based projects and on-site training.

“I e-mailed my daughter to let her know what happened, and I asked if it was a big enough deal to have made national news,” English says. “I obviously didn’t know yet how bad this was.” English’s daughter wrote back right away and told her that it was a 7.0 and she was hearing reports about tsunami warnings.

Across the courtyard, fellow volunteer Chuck Gulas, PT, PhD, GSC, was in the kitchen. “Having been in a quake before, I knew there had to be a lot of damage,” he says. “It was strong and immediately, in-Haiti phone service went out.”

As news started coming to Albert Schweitzer, everyone’s first thought was to head for Port-au-Prince, says Gulas, Dean of the School of Health Professions at Maryville University in St. Louis.

“We all wanted to get out there and rescue people,” Gulas says. “But then we started to get patients; more and more kept coming because other hospitals weren’t functioning. We realized we could do a lot more good by staying at the hospital.” Even miles from the center of the devastation, the scene was intense. Gulas, English and the local staff saw a wide variety of people with lost limbs, crushed limbs, head trauma, spinal-cord injuries or a combination of those injuries. Adding to the chaos and stress, many of the patients and staff members were themselves missing family members.

In Port-au-Prince, a team of volunteers assembled by Handicap International arrived from the U.S. Among them was Al Ingersoll, an OT and prosthetics specialist from the Minneapolis area with a special connection to Haiti. Ingersoll and his wife began volunteering with another group, Healing Hands for Haiti, eight years ago. He and his wife have an adopted son, Patrick, from Haiti, and they return two or three times a year to volunteer.

But this time, arriving in Port-au-Prince was different. “It was devastating,” Ingersoll says. “I have been to Haiti many times and I recognized so many buildings. To see them pancaked was very disturbing.”

Adding to the complication, all of the prosthesis and orthopedic clinics in Port-au-Prince were destroyed or rendered useless. With so many challenges, Ingersoll was concerned about getting care to the people. “So many of the injured couldn’t begin recuperating,” he says. “They were just sitting or lying down and developing musculoskeletal and mental complications. We just wanted to get therapists to them.”

Empowering Locals
To meet immediate needs, Ingersoll and his group partnered with Haitians, working in teams to assess the situation, coordinate technicians, find temporary locations to work from and focus on training locals so they could continue basic rehab.

At the time of the quake, Gulas had been teaching a rehabilitation tech program to six students. In the days after the disaster, he found it important to try to maintain as regular a schedule as possible.

“Because everyone was missing people, it became apparent that we had to restore a routine for the students,” Gulas says. “They wanted to help and they knew that through this program, they would get the skills. Learning gave them some hope for the future.”

English echoes that desire to inspire volunteers to teach and provide skills to locals and support Haitians’ self-directed efforts. “The Haitian people value education, and that’s one reason I go back as a volunteer — because they truly value what they are getting from us,” she says. “Haiti is presented as such a difficult place, but you can make a big difference by changing things for a few individuals who then will touch so many more with what they do.”

Ongoing Need
Gulas and English encourage those eager to volunteer to remember there will be much need for many years. When the media attention dies down, the professional community’s commitment will be more important than ever. “This is not going to be a few weeks or a few months,” Gulas says. “Haiti is going to need therapists for years.”

Ingersoll advises the rehab community to coordinate amongst itself so not everyone shows up at once without a long-term plan. “We will need volunteers in a year, and I’m concerned we won’t have people willing to wait,” he says. “Rehab is long-term. Everyone sees the news and wants to be there yesterday. Now is the time to ramp up the people going in, but it needs to crescendo over the next three to six months.”

Libby Lowe is a contributing writer for Today in PT.