January 22, 2010
By Linda Bloom

NEW YORK – Medical specialists are the first category of volunteers needed to assist earthquake survivors in Haiti.

Officials with the United Methodist Committee on Relief and other units of its parent agency, the Board of Global Ministries, said they would be working with the Methodist Church of Haiti and other organizations to provide medical and other services to Haiti.

"We have already received an outpouring of inquiries and offers for volunteers to provide a variety of services," wrote Bishop Joel Martinez, the Board of Global Ministries' interim top executive, in a letter to bishops. "While we are encouraged by this spirit of support, we strongly advise that teams and others not set out for Haiti at this time."

Many other volunteers will be needed later as Haiti recovers from the Jan. 12 earthquake, which destroyed much of Port-au-Prince, resulted in an estimated 75,000 to 200,000 deaths and left upward of 2 million people homeless. Currently, however, the country's shattered infrastructure cannot support volunteer teams.

Dalton Rushing, director of communications in the office of United Methodist Volunteers in Mission for the denomination's Southeastern Jurisdiction, said transportation also remains a concern. "The main problem is that it's just about impossible right now for volunteers to get in and out of Haiti," he explained.

Looming medical crisis

Rushing said his office is flagging the names of people with medical skills on potential volunteer lists.

The New York Times reported a looming medical crisis in Haiti as the wounds of thousands of earthquake survivors remained untreated and the number of bodies left in the wreckage increased the risk of disease.

The Board of Global Ministries advises that some medical specialists may want to respond to a call from the U.S. government for trauma surgeons, orthopedists, anesthesiologists and others with experience in treating crush injuries.

Those volunteers must be able to serve for at least two weeks, and be willing to live and work in spartan conditions. Preference will be given to physicians who are Creole or French speakers and to those credentialed through the Medical Reserve Corps in their home state or the ESAR-VHP (Emergency Services Advanced Registration of Volunteer Health Personnel) program.

For more information, contact Michala Koch at Michala.Koch@hhs.gov. For information on becoming part of the Medical Reserve Corps go to http://www.medicalreservecorps.gov.

Volunteers for the long haul

United Methodist volunteer teams have been working in Haiti for decades and Rushing predicted that people with any number of skills – including experience in construction, education and pastoral care – would be welcome once the country is able to support those workers.

"This situation is so dire that we need everybody," he added.

Short-term volunteer experiences can last from one week to two months. A map outlining the regions covered by the denomination's U.S. jurisdictional volunteer coordinators can be found at umvim.info.

Those coordinators, with telephone numbers and email addresses are North Central, Lorna Jost, (605) 692-3390, umvim-ncj@brookings.net; Northeastern, Gregory Forrester, (607) 756-7799, umvimnej@twcny.rr.com; Southeastern, Paulette West, (404) 377-7424, sejinfo@umvim.org; South Central, Debbie Vest, (913) 568-8826, vimscj@scglobal.net; and Western, Heather Wilson, (818) 333-6730, umvimwj@hotmail.com.

Placement for individual long-term volunteers, serving two months to two years, is possible as the recovery in Haiti progresses. More information is available at http://www.individualvolunteers.info/.

"We will be working in Haiti for a long, long time," Rushing said. "The underlying problems of extreme poverty in Haiti have really increased the amount of work it's going to take to recover from this disaster."

United Methodist News Service
Linda Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.