Island team reports on medical mission to Haiti

by Rustie Dimitriadis
Grand Island Dispatch, April 8, 2005

A team of 13 medical missionaries from Whitehaven Road Baptist Church traveled to Haiti back in February to provide medical care. Pictured here are (kneeling, left to right): Carol Heim, Assistant Pastor Peter from Haiti, Deanna Pace, Larry Stolzenburg, and Dr. Andy Harbison. In the back row (left to right) are: John Harbison, Dan Uttley, Dr. Diane Cress, Mary Frey, Becky Holka, Nancy Cliff, Dr. Keith Felstead, and Rose Harbison. Missing from the photo is Tony Sinicki.

On a recent medical mission with Whitehaven Road Baptist Chruch, Dr. Andy Harbison (center) administered medical care to a young Haitian girl. Harbison was assisted by interpreter Franchette Augustine (left) and Nurse Nicole from Haiti (right).

On February 2, Whitehaven Road Baptist Church sent a team of 13 volunteers to the Republic of Haiti on what participants described as "a mission ordained by the Lord." Recently, the team reported back to their congregation and guests at a dinner at the church detailing the outcome of this second annual medical missions trip.

While in Haiti, the team held medical clinics in Cavaillon, St. Louis, and Les Cayes, the third largest city in Haiti. The market town of Cavaillon is a strategic location, as it doubles in population to 20,000 on market days and is the site of a brand new medical clinic funded by WRBC.

The clinic building, which cost around $25,000, was completely financed by donations from WRBC. Another $25,000 was provided by a private donor and his wife. The couple inherited money from the man's mother, who was a nurse, and when they heard about WRBC's work in Haiti, they immediately sent a check to cover the necessary training and equipment.

During the clinics, medical staff attended to patients with the help of Haitian lab technicians, while Dan Uttley and other translators assisted as needed. Some of the conditions the doctors treated were fairly common, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, intestinal worms, pneumonia, colds, and flu. In addition to these maladies, Dr. Keith Felstead reported that he saw some illnesses that he had never encountered before. One of these was a rare eye cancer, which was difficult for doctors to handle, as it requires care above and beyond what can be done in a week.

Dr. Diane Cress and her helper, John Harbison, provided eye exams and glasses to many of the Haitians who came to the clinics. One of these patients was a 16-year-old girl who went blind due to an untreated herpes virus a year ago. The team arranged for the girl to travel to Buffalo this summer for a corneal transplant. The surgeon, hospital, and Ronald McDonald House each agreed to donate their services.

Another Haitian child whose life has been forever changed as a result of the medial mission is a little albino girl named Sheila. Sheila has abnormal pigmentation, which causes white skin and hair and pink eyes. Albinos must avoid overexposure to the sun, which is extremely difficult in a place like Haiti. Her story has a happy ending, however, as she has been adopted by a Western New York family with another adopted albino child.

At an orphanage run by the Bethanie Mission church, team members treated 16 orphans for minor scrapes, cuts, colds, and fevers. They were also able to procure the needed medication to treat a severe scabies outbreak. The team later learned that another church from Western New York had been to one of the same orphanages on an earlier missions trip to Haiti and had been unable to treat a ringworm outbreak. However, after reading about WRBC's trip to Haiti in the Island Dispatch, they called Pastor Abe Dueck to alert the team about the outbreak so that they would be equipped to deal with it.

As well as providing medical care, the team had the chance to share the Gospel with some of the people they encountered. In addition to training the interpreters to use the 1,000 witness bracelets provided by one of the churches back home, Uttley had an opportunity to witness to the patients coming into the pharmacy and to share the Gospel in Creole with a group of children in a soccer field.

Uttley, who grew up in Haiti, attended the team's presentation dinner last year and was excited join this year's medical mission. Although it was hard to see the deterioration of the country since he had last been there, he considered it a privilege to serve alongside the team.

During their stay, the group worshiped at a church in Les Cayes on Sunday and several members of the team shared with the congregation. Afterwards, the group spent time at the Caribbean beach at Port Salut. As was the case when the team arrived in Port-au-Prince, they were aware of the presence of UN soldiers acting as peacekeepers as Haiti prepares for elections in the fall.

The team's future ideas for ministering in Haiti include providing free medical training seminars, which will help train the Haitian people to prevent and deal with more serious illnesses. Dr Andy Harbison, who works at a local teaching hospital, hopes to arrange for interns to work in Haiti for a month at a time. Long range possibilities include building a Haitian-run hospital, which is the hope of Pastor Augustine, who runs the Hosanna House where the team stayed.

Although most of the week went fairly smoothly, one of the problems with the free clinics was crowd control, as there were literally hundreds of people lined up to receive treatment. "You can't possibly see everybody; our best day ever was 200 patients," explained Larry Stolzenburg, who has been to Haiti several times on missions trips. All in all, the team saw about 450 patients while in Haiti.

Of the experience, Stolzenburg said, "You come home changed by it. Sometimes I think the trip does more good for us than for the people that we help because the culture there is so poor and yet so happy with nothing that it teaches you something about how our culture should run."

That sentiment seemed to be unanimous among the eight returning team members and the five first timers. Felstead, who made his first trip to Haiti with the team, said, "I would challenge anyone who has a chance to go on a trip like this to do it. I gained a lot by going," he continued. "We met a lot of special people; I would definitely go again."