As our medical team returned from Haiti and the Dominican Republic earlier in the week (view photos on courierpostonline.com), they shared their stories with a number of news outlets while one reporter who traveled with the team recounted her time spent with the medical mission.
Inside Haiti: A Local Reporter Sifts Through the Rubble, Philadelphia Weekly
Reporter Susan Phillips recounts her time traveling with our medical team in Haiti and the Dominican Republic:
It’s Thursday, January 21, nine days after the earthquake hit about 15 miles away in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Survivors continue to arrive on flatbed trucks at the one-story public hospital, hoping for medical treatment unavailable back home in the capital city. Soon after the earthquake hit, Jimaní became the back door route in and out of Haiti for thousands of people making their exodus, and thousands of others, including doctors, aid workers and journalists, trying to get inside the country. I was one of those trying to get in with a group of doctors, nurses and technicians from Cooper University Hospital in Camden, N.J. I got a call four days earlier from George Norcross, a board member of Cooper. “Susan,” he said, “are you ready to fly south?” Norcross said planes weren’t allowed to land in Port-au-Prince so he was using his company’s private jet to fly a group of doctors to Santo Domingo, in the neighboring Dominican Republic. From there they planned to make their way into Haiti. A newspaper reporter and I were to be embedded with the group.
Read the complete story online at PhiladelphiaWeekly.com.
Cooper Staff Adapted to Difficult Conditions in Haiti, Courier-Post
Scores of Haitian people endured excruciating pain as steel rods used to realign fractured bone were drilled into their legs. Such procedures in the U.S. would call for the patient to be administered a general anesthesia, said Dr. Joshua Torres-Cruz. But morphine or other powerful pain medications were in short supply for survivors of the Jan. 12 earthquake that left many with limbs crushed by collapsed buildings. Instead, Torres-Cruz said, the patients were given a spinal anesthesia that numbed their lower extremities and painkillers comparable to aspirin. That was one of the many experiences Torres-Cruz brought back with him from Haiti as part of a Cooper University Hospital medical team that was welcomed home Monday after spending 12 days in the Caribbean country.
Read the full story online at CourierPostOnline.com.
Cooper Hospital Team Returns from Haiti to a Hero’s Welcome, KYW1060.com
As Cooper workers clapped and cheered, medical team leader Dr. Anthony Mazzarelli read off the names of the 18 hospital team members who spent nearly two weeks working on the Haitian-Dominican border, providing thousands of injured patients with emergency surgical and critical care.
Listen to the complete report and view a slideshow of photos on KYW1060.com.
Burlington County Docs, Nurses Return From Haiti, Burlington County Times
A team of local medical professionals returned Friday after spending 12 days in Haiti treating earthquake survivors. The 18 volunteers were sent from Cooper University Hospital to provide much-needed medical care to injured victims of the 7.0-magnitude quake that devastated the impoverished Caribbean nation on Jan. 12. The mission trip was coordinated by Cinnaminson resident Dr. Anthony Mazzarelli, director of Emergency Medicine at Cooper, and was funded by the city hospital and The Norcross Foundation.
