Former Combat Medics Battle a New Foe

With PADF’s help, team of seven treated hundreds of survivors in Haiti’s capital

By Julie Hyman



Guy-Gerard Gachelin had never seen anything like it before. Tens of thousands of people were everywhere on a golf course in Village Musseau, Haiti. Some were seriously injured but many just sat still in disbelief. The earthquake had claimed everything: All of their possessions; their homes; even loved ones were lost in the rubble. They had no other place to go after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake had devastated them and their country.  

Gachelin – himself shocked and overwhelmed by what he was seeing – approached the mass of people set up on the golf course. Using his native Creole and French, Gachelin learned that for some 15,000 to 20,000 people, there was one single doctor.  He was amazed.

“That [one doctor], he was my hero, because he showed up every single day. Without him, there would be no medical help in the area,” Gachelin said.  It’s amazing “to see the good that has come out of a natural disaster.”

And although he is modest, Gachelin is part of that “good.”  Upon hearing about the devastation in his native country, the former U.S. Navy combat medic wasted no time in recruiting five fellow veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and one former medic from the Israeli army.  He eagerly set out to find a way to get the team and their medical skills from Miami to Haiti and get to work.  

“This is my country, let me try to do something,” thought Gachelin, who grew up traveling between his mother’s house in New York City and his father’s home in Haiti.

Unfortunately, getting the group to Haiti was harder than he thought.  They contacted organization after organization to send them as a team of volunteers to the ravaged country, but their request got lost in the post-earthquake chaos.  

“People would say they would call you back. [Others] would say that they weren’t taking volunteers right now,” Gachelin said of the group’s frustration.

Finally, their persistence paid off when they were put into contact with the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF) on Saturday, Jan. 16.  Although PADF is not a medical organization, it recognized the value of the team’s skills.  By Thursday, Jan. 21 the team was on a flight to Santo Domingo, where they would travel over land for about seven hours through the Dominican Republic to Haiti.

What Gachelin and his six fellow medics saw when they arrived to the capital of Haiti was shocking – even 10 days after the major quake.

“The best way I can describe it is as if there was a war in the country and bombers were flying over and dropped bombs in every single neighborhood,” Gachelin said.  “It was worse than Iraq as far as the destruction that we witnessed. It was horrible.”

Working with PADF’s country office in Haiti, the team was assigned to a camp of about 5,000 people in the neighborhood of Delmas that had yet to receive any relief supplies or medical care.  On their first day alone, the team – along with one PADF staff member and eight Haitian police officers – organized the food distribution for the entire camp of 5,000 and treated 150 people who had suffered a wide range of injuries.  

“We sutured. We gave IVs. We prescribed medications. We discharged patients with the proper way of taking medications. We requested follow-ups. We did splinting of broken arms, broken legs and fingers. We gave instructions on preventive medicine,” Gachelin said.

But the help they gave was more than simply medical.  Gachelin remembers one young patient in particularly bad shape.  He made her smile, and that made all of the difference.

“There was a kid [who] came in with her mom and her dad at the clinic that we set up. She was completely dehydrated. Her mouth, nose, eyes were completely dried out. She couldn’t even cry,” Gachelin explained.  “I took a medical glove out of my pocket and made a balloon out of it and I drew two eyes and a smile and she actually got to smile and that really touched me.”

In addition to medical and emotional support, the group showed the earthquake victims how to organize the chaos of the camps of displaced people.

“With the help of the Haitian police and the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, we managed to actually create security and an organized system” that first day, Gachelin explained.  “Basically, we would go into the tent cities and show people how to organize a designated area to eat, a designated area to use the restroom, a designated area to bring garbage.”

After a week of providing medical care, organizing, giving out relief supplies and working to bring attention to areas ranging from Delmas to the golf course-turned camp Gachelin had stumbled upon, it was time to return to Miami.  But Gachelin’s heart is still in Haiti.  He continues to assist with relief efforts from the United States.

“I’m so passionate about Haiti and about helping because there is a dire need,” he said.  “What I’m working on now is trying to get the tarps going.  People are just living in tent cities and under sticks and sheets and plastic, but if it rains, everything they’ve tried to recreate, it’s gone.  Just thinking about it gives me a headache.”

As he calls companies and reaches out to friends to find tarps, Gachelin knows that these efforts are every bit as important as saving the life of the young Haitian girl who was close to dying from dehydration.
 
“Everything matters,” he said matter-of-factly. “No matter what you do, no matter how you participate in the relief effort, every little thing matters.”