JOHNS HOPKINS PHYSICIANS SERVING IN HAITI DISASTER; OTHERS PREPARING TO DEPART

Several Johns Hopkins Medicine physicians are now in Haiti and helping to serve that battered nation’s injured and suffering. These volunteers range from emergency physicians to a pulmonary specialist. More Hopkins medical experts are hoping to go to Haiti to help the nation recover in the near future.

Those who are there now include:

- Michael Millin, M.D., a disaster medicine expert in the Johns Hopkins Department of Emergency Medicine. He has been deployed to Haiti as part of the New Jersey Disaster Medical Assistance Team. He serves as medical officer for the team, which is trained and equipped to be self-sufficient in disaster zones. Millin was last reported preparing to deploy from the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince to a U.S. Coast Guard vessel offshore in Haiti. The team will assist with trauma patients flown onboard by helicopter.

- Karen Schneider, M.D., a Catholic nun with the Sisters of Mercy and a Johns Hopkins pediatric emergency specialist, made her way into Haiti from Baltimore late last week and is now caring for earthquake victims. Traveling with Schneider were six medical residents from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics. They were in Haiti participating in a tropical medicine elective that is part of residency training. In Schneider’s last communication to colleagues at Hopkins this past weekend, she reported working on trauma patients in a U.N. medical tent at the Port-au-Prince airport. She oversees the tropical medicine elective and has trained residents in Haiti, as well as other developing nations.

- E. Lee Daugherty, M.D., a critical care specialist in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, arrived in Haiti earlier this week as a volunteer with a charitable organization. She is working at a hospital near the Port-au-Prince airport.

Those preparing to go in the near future include:

Members of the Johns Hopkins Go Team, a trained group of disaster medical experts and support staff. Christina Catlett, M.D., an emergency physician and director of the team, and Gabe Kelen, M.D., director of the Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response and chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, are assessing how the team can best serve in the short- and the long-term in Haiti before sending a contingent to the country. Catlett has cared for victims of hurricanes Katrina, Ivan and Rita. She is familiar with Haiti’s public-health infrastructure, having co-led three medical missions to the Central Plateau region of the island for Project Medishare for Haiti, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping that country develop and improve public health services.

Media Note:

For more information about Schneider or the pediatric emergency residents, please contact Kim Hoppe at 410-516-4934 or 410-935-4762.