Union County medical team goes to Haiti

1/21/2010

by Mark Maroney for the Williamsport Sun Gazette

Walking wounded, some with festering sores needing antibiotics and ointments to heal, others with broken and crushed limbs and many suffering from infectious diseases and stress disorders.

These are the sicknesses and ailments a group of optimistic doctors and nurses from Union County see as they work this week in the earthquake zone near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

Dr. Bradley K. Moyer, an emergency room physician at Evangelical Community Hospital in Lewisburg, arrived in Haiti Sunday as part of a hospital team working on behalf of God's Missionary Church and evangelical Christian and Bible-teaching mission in Penns Creek.

The team saw houses pancaked onto themselves in Port-au-Prince as they traveled the rubble-scarred streets to Carrefour, a town eight miles from the capital. Carrefour sustained an estimated 40 percent to 50 percent devastation from last week's 7.0 magnitude quake.

Bradley joins Dr. John F. Devine and registered nurses Hannah McDowell, while registered nurses Julianna Mowery and Deb Solley left Tuesday to treat the suffering in the aftermath of the disaster.

"Things are peaceful where he is," Moyer's wife wrote to Solley in an e-mail received before the nurse left for southern Florida, where she was to board a jet provided to the mission by NASCAR, Solley said.

"The people are happy to see them," Sherri Moyer wrote. The team believes itself safe and secure at the compound, which is close to a clinic operated by several physicians affiliated with Doctors Without Borders.

While there has been healing, death has not been a stranger. The United Nations estimates that 200,000 have been killed. One of the pastors Bradley spoke to lost a 2-year-old son to diarrhea and dehydration a couple days ago, something that should have been prevented, according to the medical team.

The team took with it 40,000 doses of antibiotics and anesthetic ointments courtesy of Evangelical Community Hospital. Solley said she could not be happier with hospital CEO Michael O'Keefe and all of the staff for what they have done within 75 hours of the mission's request.

God's Missionary Church has been working in Haiti about 40 years. There are about 16 national churches, most of which have Christian day schools.

Donald Mobley, an American missionary residing in Haiti, is coordinating help for the beleaguered nation. Dwight Rine is organizing trips as God's Missionary Church director of world missions.

The mission property in Carrefur is the location of its "mother" church and a Bible ministry training institute that prepares national pastors for church and day school leadership.

As of Saturday, the team estimated about 1,280 homeless Haitians were camping on the property. Among them, at least 40 were critically wounded and many others have more minor wounds. The site is seeing many crushed victims among the injured. Workers are providing water from a well to the hurt, and the food staple consists primarily of rice and beans.

For more information on this release, please contact:
Lizz Hendricks
Public Relations
570-522-4160

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