As Hampton Bisalski left Haiti, all he could think of was the people he was leaving behind.
"I thought of a little girl sleeping on the street beside her parents ... of the guy who had both of his legs amputated and parents killed by 'the event,' as they called it, who woke up and asked, 'Why did you do this to me?'" said Mr. Bisalski, a certified registered nurse anesthetist who recently returned from a one-week trip to Haiti.
He traveled to Haiti in February with a group of medical professionals from across the country on a mission trip organized by the Adventist Medical Evangelism Network, a grass-roots movement of Seventh-day Adventist physicians and dentists.
During his stay in Port-au-Prince, devastated by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake on Jan. 12, he administered anesthesia to some of the 400 patients the medical team saw daily in a makeshift medical clinic called Operation Hope.
"It was very rewarding to be able to use the skills I've learned to (help) people who were in dire need of everything but always had a mile-wide smile on their face," he said.
Despite helping the Haitians' immediate medical needs, the 59-year-old Chattanooga resident said he knows they're going to need more help in the coming months.
"When I left, the thing that really bothered me ... during the bus drive (to the Port-au-Prince airport), I thought about all the Haitians, about the monsoon season that was coming, about the disease," he said.
"We were there in the dry season," said Mr. Bisalski, alumni president for the Middle Tennessee School of Anesthesia. "When the rainy season comes, we are going to see a lot of malaria, cholera, diseases that you wouldn't normally see."
Sanitation is one of the main concerns for relief workers after the earthquake.
MEDICAL TRIPS* A group of 13 medical care professionals, including pediatricians, nurses and pharmacists, left Friday for a one-week trip to Haiti.* Through the local Children's Nutrition Program of Haiti, they will have medical clinics in Leogane, a town west of Port-au-Prince.* While the initial wave of problems after the earthquake was acute trauma and crushing injuries, now doctors expect to see skin infections and diseases related to a lack of hygiene.* The group that left Friday is the third to go on behalf of the Children's Nutrition Program since the earthquake hit Jan. 12, and the organization is coordinating efforts with groups in other parts of the country to continue sending volunteers.Source: Dr. Peter Rawlings, local pediatrician going on the trip
The U.N. Children's Fund named sanitation as one of its main priorities for the 1 million people displaced by the earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people.
"One thing I noticed more than anything else was the lack of sanitation," Mr. Bisalski said. "There was garbage stacked up in the corner of the streets. I saw a lady pull up her dress and go to the bathroom on the street because there wasn't anywhere else for her to go."
The U.N. Children's Fund and its partners plan to install more than 10,000 latrines by April and more than 20,000 in the coming six months, according to the United Nations News Centre.
Before the earthquake, just under 20 percent of the 9 million Haitians had access to latrines, the News Centre reported.
The Children's Fund also rented 1,000 portable toilets and signed an agreement with a nonprofit agency for 1,200 young people to build 1,000 sanitation blocs comprising latrines, showers and handwashing areas.
Now that he is back, Mr. Bisalski said he would like to return and continue helping with the relief efforts, although he doesn't know when he will be able to do it.