Haiti Relief, Phase 2

How to Volunteer

Specific Relief Mission Opportunities

AAOS occasionally receives requests from medical NGOs for orthopaedic surgeons to participate in a specific mission or at a specific hospital to provide Haiti surgical aid.

AAOS has vetted these organizations and finds them worthy of your support. If any such opportunities are currently available, we will announce them via a links below.

• Effective June 2011: Immediate Opportunities for Volunteers at Haiti Adventist Hospital
  
  Haiti Adventist Hospital is a 50 bed mission hospital in the Port au Prince suburb of Carrefour, Haiti. Miraculously it sustained non damage in the 2010 earthquake.  AAOS Fellows Dr. Scott Nelson and Terry Dietrich each have given many months of orthopaedic service to this hospital.  Now that Dr. Dietrich is rotating out of country after almost a year, there is an immediate need to begin a new short-term rotation of service to carry on the work.
  
  The orthopaedic service evaluates 100+ patients a week and performs 30-50 surgical cases weekly.  Many are severe pediatric deformities that have been untreated for more than 10 years. While undamaged, the hospital itself lacks several rudimentary infrastructure items, including a blood bank and pathologist, and ORs have inadequate environmental control.  Still, volunteers who have worked at HAH comment the work is unbelievably rewarding and “the best two weeks of my life.”
  
  Individuals and teams are being accepted for this opportunity. One week rotations will be accepted, but rotations of two to three weeks or longer are preferred.  Needed for service in HAH are orthopaedic surgeons, orthopaedic PAs, orthopedic residents, anesthesia provider, orthopaedic technicians and OR/PACU nurses. Residents, either orthopaedic or general surgical, are also sought. The ideal orthopedic team would consist of two or three surgeons, an OR nurse, an OR tech, an ortho PA, and two or three anesthesia providers.
  
  If you are interested to volunteer, please contact haiti@aaos.org.
• Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is urgently seeking orthopedic surgeons for its humanitarian programs in Haiti. Assignments vary from 1 to 3 months. Your help makes a difference!
• Physical and occupational therapists for the Global Therapy Group clinic at Haitian Community Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

These links provide information regarding travel to Haiti:

• US Dept. of State Travel Warning for Haiti
• Health Information for Travelers to Haiti
• Cholera information for Healthcare Providers going to Haiti

Information for Volunteers

• Personal supplies for traveling to Haiti
• Insurance tips for Haiti volunteers
• CDC’s Guidance for Relief Workers and Others Traveling to Haiti for Earthquake Response
• English/Creole Triage Dictionary from Translators Without Borders
• AMA Haiti update webinar

In Haiti now, or have returned? Tell us!

• If you are an AAOS member, let us know at Haiti@aaos.org when you arrived in Haiti, where you are working, how long you expect to stay and/or when you returned.
• Photos from our members and volunteers
• You are invited to discuss your Haitian experiences on the OTA list server
• A sample collection of AAOS member news stories from the media

Share your experience on our Haiti blog

• Add your experiences and pictures to our Haiti blog (AAOS members only): http://www3.aaos.org/member/discuss/haiti.cfm
• Please sign this Non-exclusive license so that AAOS can use your pictures and personal stories from Haiti.

For general inquiries, please contact Haiti@aaos.org