Surgery at Hôpital Albert Schweitzer

After completing their work on the USNS Comfort, four Project HOPE volunteers travelled to Deschapelles, Haiti to lend their medical assistance to the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer. The volunteers have already performed several surgical procedures and attended to several of the 150 inpatients in this 80-bed facility. Volunteer Dr. Neelakantan Sunder, an anesthesiologist from Massachusetts General Hospital and current HOPE Medical Director offers this account of work at Albert Schweitzer:

The medical staff at Hôpital Albert Schweitzer called on us during our first evening of arrival. The ward nurse couldn’t find the doctor on call, and hearing there was a “fresh” team of U.S. doctors on campus, they woke us and asked if we could help. We performed an above knee amputation on a diabetic patient with gangrene.

HOPE volunteers, Dr. Rosemary Duda, General Surgeon from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, performed the surgery; RN, Anne Borden, also of Massachusetts General Hospital, scrubbed in. I was the anesthesiologist and picture taker.

We are being treated very well at the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer. The facilities are well maintained and supplied. Staff is very friendly and we’ve been made to feel welcomed. It is also extremely well organized. We’ll be coming back.

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