Upon his return from nine days of volunteer work in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, Dr. Evan Rashkoff summed up his experience in one word: transformative.
Rashkoff, an orthopedic surgeon at Sharon Hospital and a Lakeville resident, spent days trying to undo some of the destruction the 7.0-magnitude quake wreaked on the people of Haiti. He said he averaged 15 surgeries each of the days he operated, repairing broken bones and mangled bodies.
“We did some follow-up surgeries on people who had surgeries to temporize injuries,†Rashkoff said. He arrived in the country Feb. 19, a little over a month after the quake hit on Jan. 12. “Other injuries had never been treated. There were lots of infections, mangled limbs, open fractures, burns.â€
Rashkoff said his connection to Haiti goes back to his childhood, when a wealthy relative took him on a cruise. Though he was only 9 years old at the time, he said, “The poverty made a big impression on me.â€
Later, when he was a student in medical school, he lived in a boarding house run by a Haitian woman, who shared her history and culture.
“I kept in touch with her for years and when I moved to Miami to do part of my medical training, she encouraged me to volunteer in the Little Haiti section of the city,†Rashkoff said.
After that experience, he was hooked.
“I’m just fascinated with the people,†he said. “Whenever there’s a story about Haiti in the news, I’m interested.â€
So naturally, when news of the earthquake broke, Rashkoff looked for a way to help. He started by reaching out to his contacts in Miami and connected with Project Medishare, a humanitarian medical organization affiliated with the University of Miami Schools of Medicine and Nursing. Project Medishare has been working in Haiti since 1994 and quickly established a mobile surgical hospital in Port-au-Prince.
Rashkoff said he worked at the mobile hospital with a host of volunteers from the United States.
“It was the most awesome group of people I have ever met,†he said. “A lot of them had been to other disasters and a lot had traveled to remote parts of the world. They were all engaged and interesting and positive and energetic.â€
Rashkoff said he was probably the only volunteer in the group who had not done similiar work in the past.
Working conditions were at times primitive, with very little food and water to go around. Rashkoff said he made it through one day on rice and Gatorade after the volunteers gave their rations to hungry patients.
“You realize you can survive on a lot less food and comfort,†he said. “We take everything for granted here. They have absolutely nothing, and I didn’t hear one patient complain the entire time I was there.â€
Rashkoff said he spent two days operating, two days running the clinic at the hospital and several days traveling to clinics in rural areas.
“There were people coming into the clinics who had chronic problems who were being seen for the first time in their lives because there was medical care available now,†he said. “There were lines of 150 people waiting to be seen. One guy walked all day to be seen in a rural clinic.â€
Another day was spent bringing patients from the city’s three permanent hospitals to the temporary Medishare hospital.
“The hospitals were in dreadful condition,†Rashkoff said. “They’re really not functioning.â€
He said Medishare plans to build a permanent hospital on the site where the temporary one now stands and that he has already signed on to return for two weeks next year.
“I hope I did something, the little that I did,†he said. “I felt guilty leaving. It just wasn’t enough.â€
For more information on Project Medishare, visit projectmedishare.org.
