Doctor seeks area medical workers to treat flood victims in Mississippi

9/4/2005
BY JANE SCHMUCKER
BLADE STAFF WRITER

A Maumee doctor is spending the Labor Day weekend trying to organize a team of 10 to 20 area doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, and medical students who can leave Tuesday for Biloxi, Miss., to treat flood victims for at least two weeks.

You don t need much motivation, Dr. Richard Paat said. You just need to look at the television and read the newspaper and see what devastation is going on.

At midday yesterday, Dr. Paat, who is chief of staff-elect at St. Luke s Hospital, had one volunteer: Carol Finley, a nurse practitioner at Bay Park Community Hospital, who is from Biloxi.

But he was working the phones with a list of medical workers who have accompanied him on previous missions with the International Services of Hope/Impact organization based in Waterville.

Such folks, he knew, would be willing to work 16 to 18-hour days, dine on U.S. military meals ready to eat, and sleep in an elementary school if they re able to leave their jobs and families in northwest Ohio.

In Biloxi, where he has arrangements to set up a clinic in a stadium, he expects to see people with infected open wounds who were injured in the devastation and then walked through dirty flood waters.

There will be people with chronic conditions who were not able to take their medication for the last week and probably a few people suffering withdrawal from illegal drugs after their supply was cut off.

We re probably going to see everything and anything, he said.

To be prepared, the charity hopes to raise at least $25,000 this weekend for medications and other supplies for the team. More would be better, but they re starting from scratch.

We have zero money and we need all we can get, said Stan Greene, chief of logistics for International Services of Hope, which is also collecting medical supplies such as thermometers, canes, and crutches.

For more information or to help, go to www.isohimpact.org, call 419-878-8548, or take items to its warehouse from 2 to 6 p.m. today or 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. tomorrow at 905 Farnsworth Road, Waterville.