GOSHEN, Ind — Fourteen doctors and nurses from South Bend and Mishawaka hospitals departed for Haiti on Tuesday afternoon from Goshen and South Bend airports to help the victims of the Jan. 12 earthquake.
Friendship Flights Foundation Inc., based at the Goshen Airport, helped organize the two flights of seven medical staff each. Biomet of Warsaw earlier donated equipment that was shipped to Haiti and Tuesday donated the company’s Citation Excel jet to fly the medical volunteers to Haiti. The group includes orthopedic doctors, infectious disease specialists, three anesthesiologists and emergency room nursing staff. The other group’s flight was sponsored by a South Bend businessman.
Rick Skupski, an anesthesiologist with Memorial Hospital, said this is his first such mission trip.
“I’ve been bucking to get on one. This worked out (schedule-wise),” Skupski said before jumping on the Biomet jet. “We’ve been planning this for two weeks, but it just came together Monday.”
Skupski has been a doctor for 18 years.
“A lot of us will be doing whatever needs to be done,” he said. “We’ll be busy, completing 25 to 30 surgeries a day.”
The group is expected to work 16 to 20 hours a day before returning next Wednesday about 8:30 p.m., said Donna Dickens, a nurse from Memorial. She said she has been on a similar mission for two weeks in Ecuador.
“I think we’ll work very long days at the regional hospital,” she said.
The group represents St. Joseph Regional Medical Center, South Bend Orthopedics and General Vascular Surgeons, explained Sister Laureen Painter, vice president at St. Joseph Hospital Foundation.
“This started when I asked two doctors to go,” Painter explained Tuesday.
The doctors then recruited more help. Painter said while this team is going to Haiti to serve, it has a backup team that will care for its local patients.
“It is the beginning of something from this community,” she said, predicting more such aid projects to follow.
Painter said doctors have donated $30,000 toward the project and St. Joseph Hospital has shipped new equipment and medicine ahead of this group. The flight would have cost $8,000 one way, Painter said..
Dr. Meredith Wierman, who specializes in infectious disease, said she has been going to Haiti since she was in the fourth grade. She explained her parents served as missionaries there for a time, but she has volunteered recently as a doctor.
Wierman had been planning a mission trip in early March, but has cancelled that trip. She said the Port-au-Prince that she knew is gone.
“I’ll help with infections, open wounds and fractures,” Dr. Wierman said.
She has been told they also will treat tetanus and dengue fever.
The group will fly into Cap Haitian at the northern part of the island and serve at a Milot hospital. It had been a 70-bed hospital but has swelled to more than 300 beds.
“They have been flying in 10 to 12 helicopters a day with patients,” Painter said.
The volunteers were told their accommodations may range from dorm-type rooms to tents.
The Biomet crew is expected to bring the volunteers back to Goshen next Wednesday night.
A second flight also left Goshen airport Tuesday afternoon with medical supplies intended for Haitian hospitals and clinics.
A jet owner allowed Friendship Flights to use the plane to carry 1,500 pounds of medical supplies First Church of God in Columbia City collected for relief in Haiti. This is the second time the church has sent medical supplies through Friendship Flights. The last flight with 1,200 pounds of medical supplies took place Jan. 24.
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Goshen-based company flies doctors to Haiti
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