Heart to Heart plans a long stay helping in Haiti

By JIM SULLINGER

The Kansas City Star

After three weeks in Haiti, Heart to Heart International has provided three large plane loads of medicine and supplies, tons of food and water and thousands of hygiene kits.

Gary Morsch, founder of Heart to Heart and a physicians, said about 25 doctors and 10 nurses have been working in Haiti on behalf of the relief organization.

“We’ve worked in about a dozen different sites seeing probably 10,000 patients,” he said.

The medical teams have been caring for wounds, broken bones and getting the most severely injured into field hospitals for surgery. He estimated that 500,000 people were severely injured in the earthquake.

Heart to Heart personnel even found Americans who were badly injured and saw that they were returned to U.S. hospitals.

“We’ve been pretty busy,” he said.

And Morsch said Heart to Heart, headquartered in Olathe, will not be abandoning the effort in the coming weeks or months.

“Heart to Heart plans to be here for several years, maybe forever,” he added.

Morsch, who returned to Kansas City last Saturday after two weeks in Haiti, said it could be a generation at least before the Haiti can recover.

“I have never thought of any disaster in the world that would take that long,” he added.

He said Haitians with terrible wounds were still coming into clinics three weeks after the earthquake.

“They just couldn’t get down out of the mountains and get a ride in to where our teams were,” he said.

He said 3 million Haitians are affected and 1 million of those are homeless. He said other disasters, such as Katrina in New Orleans and the earthquake in China, occurred in developed countries with significant resources and ability to respond.

“I believe it’s the worst disaster in modern history or at least in my lifetime,” he said, “So much suffering concentrated in such a small area.”

He said the current relief effort has been hampered because there are only few access points available for aid to arrive.

“You don’t have multiple airports in Haiti to handle cargo planes,” he said, adding that it was taking five days for one cargo ship to unload because the port had been destroyed in the earthquake.

Morsch said he had seen a few U.S. television reports on the crisis in Haiti and sensed the frustration by reporters that aid was not getting to the people fast enough.

“If you were here you’d be thinking what a great job everybody is doing getting what aid out we were getting out,” he said. “It’s almost an impossible situation.”

He said there was only one major road coming into the country from the adjoining Dominican Republic.

“The world may have what Haiti needs,” Morsch said. “The question is how do you get it in there and get it distributed.”

To reach Jim Sullinger, call 816-234-7701 or send e-mail to jsullinger@kcstar.com.

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