Eyeworld

EW IN OTHER NEWS 168 March 2011 by Faith A. Hayden EyeWorld Staff Writer Ophthalmologists band together for Haitian eyecare recovery W e all remember the first images out of Haiti after the 7.0- magnitude earth- quake rocked Port-Au-Prince on January 12, 2010, transforming the home of more than 2 million people into a man- gled pile of concrete crumbles and twisted metal, coated with a thick, dusty gray ash. Between the massive injuries (3 million people were in need of emergency care), insur- mountable death toll (more than 200,000 people were killed), and de- molished buildings, which included 70% of all structures in Port-Au- Prince including hospitals, the Presidential Palace, and National Cathedral, the country was in need of a massive humanitarian response from all of the world to dig out. One of those efforts came from the American Academy of Ophthal- mology (AAO) in conjunction with the Pan-American Association of Ophthalmology (PAAO), Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, and the Associ- ation of Haitian Physicians Abroad in the form of the Task Force on Haiti Recovery. Lead by former AAO president Michael W. Brennan, M.D., a comprehensive ophthalmologist in Burlington, N.C., the Task Force is a team of 10, including Nelson Marques, chair, Pan-American Oph- thalmological Foundation, Daniel Laroche, M.D., director, glaucoma service, St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospi- tal, New York, and Stephanie Marioneaux, M.D., Chesapeake, Va. The Task Force originated about 4 days after the quake, when Dr. Brennan and colleagues decided to turn their conversations about the situation into an action plan. "We selected people for the Task Force who had connections; people who could get things done," Dr. Brennan explained. "These were not people who were necessarily going to go down there, but people who had the right background." For example, Dr. Marioneaux is a comprehensive ophthalmologist, speaks French, and her father was an ambassador to Haiti. Mildred M.G. Olivier, M.D., is a Haitian-American who has traveled to the country two or three times per year providing medical care since 1993. The first thing the Task Force did was go to Haiti, meet with the Haitian ophthalmologists, and assess the needs from the ground. "The initial goal was to deter- mine what they needed and how to get it," said Dr. Olivier. "For exam- ple, they needed a mobile unit and the different specialties repre- sented." They needed ocular plastics spe- cialists to handle all of the facial trauma cases and nurses to assist the doctors who were there. They needed equipment and a space to work in. What they didn't need was a flock of general ophthalmologists coming in and saying, "I'm here, put me to work" because the workspace didn't exist and neither did the gear. Most of the practices were concrete pancakes with all of the tools of the trade squashed underneath. "We learned pretty quickly that the overriding principle we run on and continue to demonstrate and proclaim is that we're working for, with, and through the Haitian oph- thalmologists," Dr. Brennan said. "We found out what they needed and what they didn't need. There were a lot of inappropriate volun- teers there in the beginning. All were well intended, no question about that." Dr. Olivier went to Port-Au- Prince a week after the earthquake struck. She was already scheduled to go to Cap-Haïtian that month on an aid mission, so it was only a matter of switching some things around. "I was getting these horrible emails from our Haitian colleagues saying, 'Come, don't think about it, just come.' One physician had 150 people in his backyard because peo- ple knew he lived there and just showed up at his house. He had run out of Band-Aids, water, and food. He couldn't keep up. "People with high blood pres- sure were having strokes, and in the middle of all of this, babies were being born," she continued. "One doctor was up almost a week straight in the operating room trying to do amputations. When I got there, she was almost collapsing." In addition to the much-needed physical assistance Dr. Olivier pro- vided, the Task Force coordinated the donation and distribution of Daniel Laroche, M.D., performing surgery in Haiti Source: Mildred M.G. Olivier, M.D. From left to right: Haitian ophthalmologists Beatrice Valerius, M.D., and Franz Large, M.D., head of the Haitian Society of Ophthalmology, and Task Force volunteers Stephanie Marioneaux, M.D., Richard Lee, M.D., and Mildred M.G. Olivier, M.D. Source: AAO Beatrice Valerius, M.D., with Haitian patients in spring 2010 Source: AAO

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