Volunteering in Haiti • November 2010

by Greg Meyer, MD

Listette, Lauri, Sally, Kathy Greg

This was the fifth trip for Homeopaths Without Borders to Haiti, and the first for me. The team consisted of team leader Lauri Grossman, Lisette Narragon, , Sally Tamplin, Kathy Farrell and myself. We brought with us different types of experience, and backgrounds enabling each to make a unique contributions to the team..

We returned to St. Vincent’s School for the Handicapped, where HWB has established a clinical relationship. Because Lauri and Lisette were familiar with the school, they were greeted warmly by patients and staff. The children are blind, deaf and orthopedically handicapped, but their complaints to us generally had nothing to do with their primary condition. Often it was an acute and/or chronic stomach problem, headache, eye problem, rash, cough, etc. More difficult conditions were also treated. Because the history was generally elicited through an interpreter, there were barriers to obtaining specifics as to modalities, and more difficult to ask open-ended questions and obtain a response that could help with diagnosis.

Two visits were made to the Universite Notre Dame D’Haiti. The first visit consisted of a three hour teaching session with about 120 nursing students in attendance—a number that has doubled since the first introductory seminar in September. This was a very practical class on first aid homeopathy taught by Laurie Grossman, and Lisette Narragon, with assistance by Sally Tamplin. There was lively involvement by the students with many questions asked and answered; the students displayed great eagerness to learn more. This was the beginning of a course based on the curriculum of the American Medical College of Homeopathy in Phoenix, and leading to certification by that institution.. HWB will be returning in January, February and March of 2011 to continue the instructional program.

A second visit was made two days later to care for any students in need of treatment. We formed teams and ministered to many in the class. This was a tremendous way to teach homeopathy by not only sharing classroom knowledge, but by actual application of remedies the students had studied.

The final day was spent at a Baptist Mission in the Delmar area of Port-au-Prince,. After a 45-minute ride from the hotel we arrived at a small two-story building with a makeshift metal spiral staircase up to the second floor, where we could set up our clinic. Using two interpreters and splitting into two teams we treated 85 people in six hours. Many were children, several with severe cases of scabies, and other rashes. Others had fevers, stomach problems, and other maladies.

We did not see cholera cases but we heard the hospitals were full of patients.

It was always nice to return to the hotel at the end of the day, be able to take a shower, have a meal, and check up on the internet. And as we watched the beautiful sunset from our roof-top vantage point, we were reminded by the tent city across the street that we were very lucky, and that was plenty more work here for Homeopaths Without Borders.