Volunteer doctors return from Haiti and vow to do more

VOLUNTEER Doctors-Cyprus who recently underwent a ten-day stint treating the injured in Haiti did the best they could, one of the six-member team said yesterday.

Olga Sophocoleous said the team “contributed to the best of its abilities”, adding that the “aim was to continue providing assistance”.

The team went to Haiti on February 4, taking medical supplies with them.

“What we saw was the complete destruction of the place. The earthquake had flattened everything. The homeless are more than 1.5 million, the dead over 200,000 and orphaned children in the thousands, and increasing all the time,” said Sophocleous.

“The people seek help and food. The situation is chaotic. All the government buildings have been destroyed and this makes the job of government services more difficult,” she added.

On arrival in Port-au-Prince, the team camped in the Sonapi industrial park, where they met up with the Greek mission of the Doctors of the World. There was a camp site and medical centre set up where 150 to 200 patients were examined a day, and a small hospital made up of 15 tents with a 45-bed capacity.

The team also collaborated with a Chinese team of dentists who set up a mobile dental clinic and helped to distribute food. Volunteer Doctors-Cyprus hope to provide longer term assistance to an orphanage, medical centre and dental clinic damaged by the quake.

Sophocleous thanked the Foreign Ministry and members of the public for help with funding and pharmaceutical company Medochemie for providing free medical supplies.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.