As he introduced keynote speaker Dr. Robert Lovejoy on Monday to the Rotary Club of Jacksonville, member David Foerster referenced the typhoon devastation in the Philippines and the tornadoes that caused widespread damage in the Midwest on Sunday.
He compared those disasters to a catastrophe that occurred in 2010 in Haiti when an earthquake struck the Caribbean country.
"Thousands were killed and thousands were injured," said Foerster.
Lovejoy, an orthopedic surgeon who has volunteered in the "Doctors Without Borders" program for many years, went to Haiti soon after the earthquake to provide medical treatment to victims of the disaster.
He said more than 300,000 Haitians died in the earthquake and its aftermath, many due to lack of adequate or immediate medical care. Lovejoy and other physicians arrived at a hospital near the northern coast of Haiti four days after the earthquake. The U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy began transporting patients to the 73-bed care facility at the rate of nearly 60 patients per day.
Using tents and other nearby sites, "We became a 650-bed hospital in 10 days," said Lovejoy.
He said he and his team of surgeons performed hundreds of amputations. Many of the people injured in the earthquake had been in buildings that collapsed during the tremors. By the time patients could be treated, their compound fractures had become infected, leaving no choice but to remove their limbs, Lovejoy said.
Amputations created a need for prostheses, which are taken for granted in the United States, but were virtually unavailable in Haiti.
"We are very fortunate in this country," but in Haiti, "an amputee without a prosthesis is relegated to being the lowest member of society. They can't get a job or take care of themselves," said Lovejoy.
To meet the needs of more than 6,000 people who had limbs amputated after the earthquake, Lovejoy and his colleagues, with the help of local and national companies, established a prosthetics laboratory in Haiti and are training technicians to construct and fit artificial limbs.
Lovejoy said they began manufacturing prostheses as soon as the lab went into operation.
A three-year training program to teach people how to make prostheses began two years ago. When the first group of technicians graduates, they will be the first certified prosthetists in Haiti, Lovejoy said.
He said the recovery and progress in general in Haiti will be a slow process. While a few of the major roads have been paved for the first time and an electric generation station is being built as part of the international earthquake relief effort, the country still is struggling as it has for decades.
"We can't change Haiti, but if we can change a life and make it better, we've done something constructive," Lovejoy said.
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