HIS HEALING HANDS
HAITI 2010

     After our medical missionary team returned from Haiti, my patients in my medical practice asked about our trip to the devastation in Port-au-Prince. The answer is two-fold. 
     We successfully treated 1200 patients and made their lives better in alleviating some of their pain and suffering, but Haiti is a major disaster. Every building is either reduced to rumble or unstable off its foundation and ready to collapse after the next aftershock. No one will go inside and there are three million homeless people in Port-au-Prince, sleeping under trees, or on open ground or in makeshift tents made of sticks and blankets. When the seasonal rains start there will be another major disaster with waterborne diseases and no sanitation.
     Our medical missionary organization, “His Healing Hands” was contacted by our ministry partners at Global Aid Network, (GAIN) asking us to send a medical team to Haiti. Gain has a permanent presence in Haiti but lacked medical personnel. We put the word out to our local community and the response was immediate and overwhelming with medical volunteers, donations, media support, and the use of a private jet for ten days, which enabled us to get into the Port-au-Prince airport which was not allowing commercial jets to land. We purchased medicines and equipment with the donations, packed our backpacks and set off for Haiti.
      Everything came together in a miraculous way for our medical team of 4 doctors, 4 nurses, 2 firefighter paramedics, an EMT, a respiratory therapist and a pharmacy technician. We worked together like a well oiled machine because we had a common goal to serve the people of Haiti and show them the love of God through medical care. These people were extremely grateful and appreciated the involvement of medical personnel from the U.S.
     This trip not only directly helped the most underprivileged people of our hemisphere but changed the lives of our team members.

Dr. Mick Lebens said, "The medical work brought me Wilmy who lost one arm and both parents in the earthquake. What does his future hold in a country that often hides its disabled, banishing them to back rooms feeding them with any left over food that may remain after the others eat. His reciprocal grin, though, let me know his resiliency , like most Haitians shines brightly. The clinic also brought me the couple that lost 5 children as the Port au Prince school collapsed onto itself. Their tender touch of their remaining child, a baby, showed me of the love that remains in their heart."

Charles Brown, EMT said, "Today, one of our interpreters recognized a woman and her baby who had been at the clinic everyday for the last 3 days. After talking with her, it seemed that she had walked 3 hours with her child on a donkey to get to the clinic for a medical exam and medicine for her child. She was waiking each day at 4 am and walking to the clinic to be seen. The clinic had closed the first two days before she could be seen, so she walked home only to return the following day. The doctors examined the woman and her son and ended up treating him for an infection and her for pain and gastritis. The medicine her son received today very well could have saved his life."

     We thank all of you who partnered with “His Healing Hands”, by supporting us both financially and prayerfully. You are a part of this team effort. I was personally privileged to go on this trip accompanied by my daughter Faith Frankel M.D. who is a resident at  the department of Family Practice at U.S.C.   
                   Warren Frankel M.D., president of “His Healing Hands” and owner of Sculpterra Winery.