METAIRIE, La. -- A local surgeon spent Wednesday seeing patients in Metairie, but Thursday he will land in Haiti and his skills in trauma care will be used to their fullest.
When the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons put out a national call to doctors for help in Haiti, Dr. Frederic Wilson of Ochsner answered it.
"I think it's a moral obligation. I mean, if you have skills and they are needed, it's to me, not acceptable to not go," Wilson said.
Wilson is trained in trauma and the reconstruction of complex fractures, skills desperately needed after the two earthquakes near Haiti's capitol city.
"One of the surgeons who's already returned from his first stint down there said, by his estimation, there are somewhere between 200,000 and 500,000 injuries or injured people that haven't been taken care of. There are by most estimates 200,000 dead and so it's still really a pretty chaotic situation," he added.
In the past few days Wilson spent his free time asking hospitals for any supplies and medicines that they no longer need and don't plan to use.
"There are critical shortages in all of the operating room equipment, dressings, bandages, antibiotics, medications, anesthesia equipment, scalpels, you name it, there are critical shortages," explained Wilson.
Open bone injuries should be treated within a day, but by now many of those injuries that would have been survivable, are now lethal. He knows he will have to amputate limbs that could have been reconstructed. He'll be in a battle just to save lives.
Wilson plans to volunteer for at least two weeks in a hospital near Port-au-Prince. And after each day's work, he's on his own.
"They told us to bring up one of those roll up pads and a little inflatable pillow and a mosquito net. So they said they can't guarantee food, water, a place to stay, or security at this point. So it's really kind of up in the air," he said.
But he knows his sacrifices are nowhere near those of the Haitian people who sleep in the same conditions without the comfort of the many loved ones who did not make it through the natural disaster.
Ochsner doctors say they have told medical coordinators in Haiti that they can take a few dozen patients in their local hospitals, who are too sick to treat in Port-au-Prince.
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