Southland doctor performs surgery on Haiti quake survivor aboard aircraft carrier

Among Southland doctors and nurses aiding Haitian earthquake relief efforts today is Dr. Henri Ford. As chief of surgery at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, Ford helped Dr. Demetrios Demetriades organize a team of 10 trauma specialists from the Keck School of Medicine at USC. The team has been treating quake victims at a field hospital in Port-au-Prince’s national soccer stadium.

But Ford was not with them this afternoon. Instead, the Haiti native was operating on wounded children with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta aboard the Carl Vinson, an aircraft carrier docked off the Haitian coast. He sent this dispatch to colleagues:

“I med-evaced a six-year-old boy who had a pelvic fracture and a ruptured bladder after a brick wall fell on his lower abdomen. I escorted him to the ship by helicopter and performed a laparotomy (abdominal surgery). While on the ship, the Chief Medical Officer asked me to stay to help with a young girl with penetrating head trauma. A roof collapsed on her and a piece of brick was embedded in her skull with extension to the brain. Last night, we removed most of the brick. However we had another piece that I could not easily reach without doing a partial craniectomy. I closed and the ship's general surgeon called Sanjay Gupta who came out to the ship this morning and removed a piece of skull. After the operation, the helicopter took us back to the embassy. I'm about to rejoin my team after 24 hours on the Vinson.”

The team had flown into Port-au-Prince yesterday from Fort Lauderdale on a private jet provided by Project Medishare Haiti and the University of Miami’s Global Institute for Community Health and Development, a spokeswoman said.

-- Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Photo: In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, Cmdr. Jerry Berman, left, a Navy surgeon; Dr. Henri  Ford, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles surgeon-in-chief originally from Haiti; Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a CNN medical correspondent and practicing neurosurgeon; and Lt. Cmdr. Kathryn Berndt, a Navy surgeon, perform surgery on a 12-year-old Haitian girl with a severe head injury aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier Carl Vinson today off the coast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Surgeons removed a piece of concrete from the child's brain. Credit: United States Navy

Comments

[calie]

Good work.
But I have to say, that the LA Times has spent scant amount of attention to the heroic efforts being made by surgeons, nurses and other health care professionals on a daily basis in Afghanistan.
While he's doing this much needed emergency work, men and women have been working tirelessly amid much more dangerous conditions, and with dwindling support from the American people.

[uncle_vito]

Great work.

Much more help that those useless politicians. What in the world can Bill Clinton or George Bush do? They no longer have any power!

Vito

[Sarah]

Heroes! Thank you all! Praying for your safety, strength, and stamina.

[TheBigPicture]

Fix them up and return them to Haiti...Do Not Allow Them On US Soil...

These Haitians will be paying for this bill for many years...