Midcoast Physicians Recount Their Mission to Haiti


From left, Dr. Douglas Cole, Dr. Kevin Olehnik and Dr. Lars Ellison

In Leogane, a Haitian city of 200,000 people, 18 miles from the capital Port au Prince and very close to the quake's epicenter, three of those physicians were from Midcoast Maine.

"We all go into healthcare to help people," said Lars Ellison, a Pen Bay Healthcare urologist. "Relief work is one person helping one person. You know you've done something of value. I find that very rewarding."

Ellison and his two Penobscot Bay Medical Center colleagues, Kevin Olehnik, an orthopedist, and Douglas Cole, a general surgeon, traveled to Haiti in the days immediately after the earthquake. Thursday, they gathered in a conference room at Penobscot Bay Medical Center to recount their mission.

Each expressed interest in returning to Haiti, perhaps as soon as late spring or early summer. And they ask the public to not forget the Haitian people, even as news coverage of the earthquake fades.

"Haitians are wonderful people," said Olehnik. "They are great people, despite the terrible things that happen in their country." He said he returned from the mission with a better perspective on his work here at home.

The three physicians had planned to be in Haiti in February as part of an ongoing medical mission organized through the University of Notre Dame, where Olehnik went to college and a program called InterVol, started by another Notre Dame graduate, Dr. Ralph Pennino. Olehnik said they moved their trip up to an immediate departure after the quake hit. It was the team's fourth medical mission to Haiti.

Following a flight on a generously donated corporate jet and short flight from neighboring Santo Domingo, they arrived in Leogane, where they'd been on a Notre Dame medical mission in 2008, to find very few buildings standing.

One remaining structure was a nursing school. This fortunate coincidence allowed the creation of what would be one of the best medical facilities in the area, manned by, among others, emergency medical personnel from Iowa, anesthesiologists from Kansas City and a medical team from Japan, equipped with a digital x-ray machine and generators. Nursing students served as assistants.

"It was pure happenstance," said Ellison. "These groups melded together. It was a remarkable jigsaw puzzle."

In a disaster zone, the physicians said, focus is on the patient and on cooperative medical care, with everyone offering their skills and supplies without quarrel or question.

Even then, conditions were hardly ideal. Wooden tables from the nursing school served as operating tables. Water had to be purified. Infection was always a concern. There was sporadic electricity. Surgeons wore headlamps. When ambient light in their classroom/operating room was gone, their medical day was done, Cole said.

Ellison noted that his specialty, urology, wasn't as important on this mission as his ability to meet patient needs immediately. Most of the injuries the team treated were broken bones and other wounds and infections caused by people being caught in collapsed buildings.

Ellison hopes the post-quake redevelopment efforts can help create systems in Haiti better than the ones that were in place before. Cole said he expects Leogane will be the focal point for healthcare in that region of Haiti.

Olehnik said he's been approached by colleagues who would like to participate in future missions, including some in the mental health field, a medical specialty that will be as important as any in the aftermath.

"We're really proud of these doctors," said Roy Hitchings, CEO of Pen Bay Healthcare. "They represent the best of humanity."

Additional information is online at intervol.org and haiti.nd.edu. Send funds designated for InterVol Haitian Relief to InterVol at 1425 Portland Ave., Box 138, Rochester, N.Y., 14621, or to the Notre Dame Haiti Program, c/o Logan Anderson, 001 Gavin Life Sciences, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Ind., 46556.

View a YouTube video made by Dr. Lars Ellison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42hnWn8bRuE

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