Medical group heads to Haiti on Saturday

As sanitation becomes a pressing need in earthquake-shattered Haiti, a local team of 11 medical professionals will leave Saturday to help with continuing relief efforts.

"The main objective of the trip is to serve as many people as we can," said Mitch Mutter, founder of the local Children's Nutrition Program of Haiti and a cardiologist at Erlanger hospital.

"No. 2 is to take a full assessment of what it's going to take going forward for our program," he said. "Third thing will be to go out to these refugee camps and see what their needs are, and the fourth thing is to meet with local political leaders and see how we can raise private funds in this country to rebuild that town and community better than how it was."

The team of two nurses and nine doctors, including a trauma surgeon, an obstetrician-gynecologist, doctors specializing in infectious diseases and a vascular surgeon, will leave early Saturday morning in two charter planes sponsored by Aztec Industries and CBL & Associates Properties Inc., Dr. Mutter said. They will return on Feb. 20 and 21.

"The entire organization was struck by the crisis in Haiti. The company felt compelled to aid in the relief efforts due to the urgency and severity of the need there," said Katie Reinsmidt, spokeswoman for CBL.

More than 1.2 million people are living in spontaneous settlements in Haiti after the 7.0-magnitude quake hit last month, according to the United Nations, and nearly 480,000 have left Port-au-Prince for neighboring areas, including Leogane.

Dr. Mutter, who has worked in Haiti for more than 20 years, said the trip was already part of a mobile clinic planned a while ago, but because of the earthquake, instead of 25 people going, 11 will go and the visit will be less routine.

"Instead of just providing public health and medical care, the surgeons are going to be operating and doing whatever they can," he said.

"I'm sure there are going to be infected injuries that will require amputations; we are expecting to see horrible infections not seen before (such as) rabies, cholera, typhoid, things that you only see in the Third World," he added.