Dr. Malik is used to moving fast. After all, he is an emergency room physician. He heard about the devastating earthquake in Haiti on his drive home from Washington County Hospital’s emergency department. In less than seventy-two hours, Dr. Malik was on a plane bound for the Dominican Republic. As part of Humanity First, an international nonprofit humanitarian relief organization, he partnered with ten other United States and Canadian physicians, nurses, and disaster response personnel to help victims of the earthquake.

On Saturday, January 16, 2010, Rafi Malik, MD, and his colleagues arrived in Santiago, Dominican Republic (Haiti’s next-door neighbor). “Before even arriving to the devastated nation, my Humanity First team and I encountered Haitian hospitality and goodwill,” related Dr. Malik. A generous Haitian man offered to escort the team to Port-au-Prince. They packed five SUVs full of donated medical supplies and reached the town of Jumani at midnight, only to find the Haitian border closed. Although they were two hours from Port-au-Prince, the overwhelming need for medical attention was evident. Dr. Malik’s team volunteered to work overnight at a disaster unit located next to the local hospital.

“ Witnessing many severe injuries, including an infected compound fracture of the leg, one could only imagine the conditions we were going to come across the next morning in Haiti,” said Dr. Malik. Attending to people lying on the ground or on flattened cardboard boxes, the team worked through the night treating thirty-five patients—four in critical condition. Patient conditions ranged from severe dehydration and burns to broken bones and open wounds. One woman had remained on the floor for six days before receiving treatment in Jumani.

She had a pelvic and back fracture and struggled to breathe. Dr. Malik believed the woman might be suffering from a pulmonary embolism (blockage of the main artery in the lung). With no ventilator available and her continued shortness of breath, the woman later died.

After a few hours of sleep in their SUVs, the team traveled over broken roads to Port-au-Prince. They set up their second medical camp at the Humanity First Haiti office only a few miles from the presidential palace. With hundreds of victims lined up outside by 7:00 am, the medical team treated 130 patients on its first day. Dr. Malik, who normally sees twenty-five to thirty patients in the ED, was now seeing 130 in a makeshift hospital with no electricity or water. “Most of the patients had deep, infected wounds that were not treated or taken care of,” said Dr. Malik.

People with serious, excruciating injuries suffered at home without medical attention for days. Dr. Malik treated two young girls with femur fractures. It takes a tremendous force to break the femur, which is one of the largest and strongest bones in the human body. Dr. Malik splinted the girls and sent them to the local hospital for surgery. In another acute case, a boy with a head injury and signs of facial paralysis was examined and sent to the hospital for surgery.

Dr. Malik lived on food rations for seven days and experienced a 5.9 aftershock. Yet he also experienced the appreciative, spirited Haitian people who acted as translators and helped organize patient records at the medical camp. He will return to Haiti in another month as Humanity First’s medical camp continues to see 300-400 patients each day.

Back at Washington County Hospital’s emergency department, electricity and water flow and antibiotics, pain medication, IVs and dressings are plentiful. Still, Dr. Malik worries about the Haitians with post-traumatic stress disorders—afraid to sleep indoors or even lean on walls. And even heavier on Dr. Malik’s mind are the legions of patients with serious wounds requiring medical follow-up. Without this care, grave infections could lead to a second wave of Haitian deaths.