A team from Fargo ND traveled to Pignon January 10-16, 2009. The team this year consisted of two surgeons: Dr Siri F. (OBGYN), and Dr Mark J. ( General), three CRNA, Kathy, Missy, Rose, three nurses, Jess, Erin and Ader and support staff, Rolf, Elsa, Kevin and Ron.
The team from Fargo flew to Miami on Friday the 9th of January, ( not all team member are from Fargo and Miami is where they all meet before flying to Haiti )
On Saturday the 10th the team flew from Miami to Port Au Prince, then took a charter flight to Pignon. The team spent Saturday going to the open market then spent time showing the new members around the village. On Sunday team members attend Church and then spent the day sorting the 9500 pounds of medical supplies that had been sent in November.
The team was given a list of 80 patients that needed surgery upon arrival. They asked that the hospital staff to narrow the list down to the toughest cases, the list was then cut down to 40. The team worked 12-13 hour days and preformed a total of 33 surgeries in 5 days. All medical care costs for the patients were absorbed by the team. This year is the first year the Fargo Team did not bring operating room nurses along with them. They depended solely on the Pignon hospital nurses staff in the operating room to scrub and circulate the cases. The hospital nursing staff did an excellent job and are to be commended.
Member of the Fargo team are also involved in other projects. They collect money during the year to purchase goats. This year they purchases 120 pregnant goats, these goats are then given to individuals that have attended special classes to take care of their goats. The hope is that this will then provide milk and future meat for the family.
The team would like to pass on this information to other medical teams coming in the near future, Anesthesia information. There were 6 tanks of O2 when they left, the ventilator in the small OR was not working, currently there was only one C02 monitor, there was plenty of sevo available, but the supply of propofol, robinal, spinal kits and marcaine ampules were very limited.
Also the team noted more mosquitoes this year.
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