Haiti 2010
On January 12, 2010, an earthquake struck Haiti’s main city, Port au Prince, killing more than 222,000 people and injuring more than 300,000. An impoverished nation where nearly 70% of the population lives on less than $2 a day; the earthquake affected 2.8 million people and rendered more than 1.5 million homeless.
NYC Medics guiding principal, the core of our organization, is rapid deployment of mobile medical units that provide urgent medical care to those who would not have access to healthcare. We fill gaps in relief operations ensuring universal access for vulnerable, disaster-affected populations, regardless of location or situation. Meaning, we go into remote, isolated areas that would otherwise go without aid or any form of medical services. In Haiti, our model allowed us to work in areas that other organizations would not.
Within four days of the catastrophe the NYCM assessment team was on the ground working with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affair and other local and international organizations paving way for the first mobile medial team to arrive three days later. This team of ten seasoned, emergent care veterans arrived within one week of the event, transporting two tons of donated essential medicines and medical supplies across the border from the Dominican Republic.
Creating the model of mobile medical teams in disaster relief efforts five years earlier allowed our teams to immediately begin working in the field. In less than 12 hours of arriving in Haiti, the first medical camp was erected in a schoolyard in one of the worst hit and dangerous areas of Port au Prince, Cite Militaire; in the first three days NYCM volunteers treated over one thousand patients seeing everything from sever crush injuries, fractures, and abrasions to anxiety, diabetes and other chronic illnesses. As the urgent needs in this community diminished, NYCM moved operations to a US Army base near the airport, and joined patrols by the 82nd Airborne, moving from one IDP camp to the next, treating and transporting the worst medical cases. The team ended its stay by staffing the night shift at Hôpital de L’Universite d’Haiti in Port au Prince.
Three additional medial teams, all of whom worked endlessly to ease the suffering of the survivors of the quake, worked throughout Port au Prince as well as beyond the city borders in regions that had not received any form of humanitarian aid until the arrival of NYCM.
Establishing partnerships with local and international organizations, NYCM teams worked with the United States Army, the United Nations, the Jenkins-Penn Haiti Relief Organization (J/P HRO), Hopital de L’Universite d’Haiti, the Harvard Health Initiative and Hôpital Albert Schweitzer addressing the needs of those affected by the devastating earthquake. In total, NYC Medics directed four teams – 53 medical professional – in disaster relief efforts treating more than 12,000 survivors; caring on average for 350 patients a day. Additionally, NYCM operations and logistics team managed the logistics and volunteer coordination of 69 medical personnel that
supported local and international nonprofits throughout the country.