Two doctors, seven nurses, two nurse practitioners, a nurse anesthetist, a paramedic and a pastor trained in grief counseling will be among 22 people who leave Fort Wayne on Tuesday to help meet the continuing needs of people in earthquake-stricken Haiti.

The group, sponsored by Associated Churches of Fort Wayne and Allen County, expects to spend 10 days staffing a medical clinic in the Caribbean nation’s devastated capital of Port-au-Prince, says the Rev. Tom Hinton of Fort Wayne, trip coordinator and former missions pastor of Fort Wayne’s Lifebridge Church.

Although the earthquake occurred nearly four months ago, Hinton says Haiti is far from recovered.

“It’s a crazy mixed bag of what’s needed,” says Hinton, 59, who has visited four times since the disaster.

“The disaster relief is done. What’s needed now is compassion relief because there was so much that was not in place before the earthquake hit.”

Team member Dr. Marilyn Whitney, a family physician who practiced in Warsaw before moving to Fort Wayne, says routine medical care has long been lacking in Haiti.

Forty percent of the people did not have access to regular medical care even before the earthquake hit, she says, and “chronic illnesses are not treated at all.”

Plus, with the rainy season now beginning, more illnesses related to it are expected, Whitney says. They include malaria, dengue fever, respiratory infections and gastrointestinal and skin conditions caused by poor sanitation and poor-quality food, drinking water and living conditions.

The team also might encounter post-surgical complications of amputations and broken bones, she adds.

Whitney, 48, has served on medical hurricane relief teams in the United States and St. Thomas but is making her first mission trip.

“I’ve certainly done medical care in an austere setting more than once, but … I think the language will be difficult because I don’t speak French or Creole,” she says.

“And I think the overwhelming poverty will be difficult. Haiti is the poorest country in this hemisphere.”

The Rev. Dan Layden of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Fort Wayne, team coordinator, says the trip is a first for Associated Churches. The group is working with MISSEH, a similar association in Haiti consisting of 14 denominations representing 3,000 churches, he says.

With the trip, officials hope to expand Associated Church’s reach beyond the Fort Wayne area, while allowing members of smaller churches unable to sponsor a mission trip to serve, Layden says.

“The more resources you can pool and draw from, the broader the impact you can make,” he says.

Members of more than a dozen Christian congregations joined the trip, Layden says. Congregations affiliated with Associated Churches also collected over-the counter medical supplies for Haiti on April 24.

Several individual team members – including Janet Anderson of Fort Wayne, a nurse practitioner, and Dr. Todd Sidel, an anesthesiologist at Lutheran Hospital – rounded up donations of medications and supplies.

Parkview and Lutheran hospitals, Heartland Hospice and the Praxis International in Indianapolis were among those making donations.

“Now the issue (in Haiti) is reconstruction, and reconfiguring the government leadership,” says Hinton, who notes some of those who provided immediate earthquake relief are now leaving.

“There is so much trauma in Haiti, and there is no easy answer. It’s just a tough, tough place,” he says.

“The compassion and the care and the listening to Haitians that is going to occur on this trip is just huge because it gives them hope,” Hinton adds, “hope as we’re there, and hope that there will be new relationships and developing relationships in the future.”

rsalter@jg.net