Oregon Public Broadcasting

A surgeon recently returned from Port-au-Prince says he’s still mindful of the need for long-term care for earthquake victims.

Dr. Christopher Achterman works in Portland at the Legacy Bone and Joint Clinic.  He spent last week volunteering for Medical Teams International, performing about fifty surgeries.

Conditions, he says, were primitive at best, and required fresh thinking about the basics.

Christopher Achterman  “There is going to be a huge need for follow up. I think University of Miami has made a commitment to have its field hospital in Haiti for at least a year. They’re close enough, they can cycle teams through. There’s going to be a monstrous need for prosthetics. Thousands of amputations have been done.”

Achterman says  he’ll concentrate in the next year on finding prosthetics that can be made and replaced at minimal cost.

Achterman worked in Haiti without access to regular power or running water, and with no x-ray machine. 

While he’s worked with trauma patients for many years, he says Haiti posed challenges beyond anything he’d seen in Oregon.