Help for Haiti

Brian Horsburgh `06 was getting ready to wrap up his job as a hospitality host for VISA when a colleague at the Winter Olympics asked him if he was interested in going to Haiti when the games were over. It was a casual conversation, but a week or so later a Facebook message from that same ticket manager read, "I`m going to Haiti... are you in?" Within days Brian found himself at a gate in the Miami airport surrounded by medical personnel in scrubs - all ready to board one of the weekly charter flights sent to Haiti through the MediShare Foundation. It was the first time Brian had heard of the group - and little did he know at the time that he would be spending the next seven weeks of his life at MediShare`s makeshift hospital in the earthquake-worn country. Those weeks were life-changing for Brian. He went there as a logistics volunteer, expecting to shovel gravel - but on day one he found himself bagging a dead body. Another day he assisted in amputating a leg. With his living quarters situated about 40 feet from the morgue, he was in close proximity to death. Eventually he was put in charge of all the deceased, which averaged about one per day. If families did not retrieve the dead bodies within four hours, they were sent off to be cremated. "With no medical examiner and the high temperatures, the need was clearly there, and someone had to fill it," Brian explained. No place teaches you that better than Haiti." At the end of week one, most of those who had traveled with Brian on the charter flight were preparing to leave - but the COO pressed him to stay. As Brian explained, it doesn`t take long to become a veteran volunteer in Haiti since very few people stay longer than a couple of weeks. He very quickly found himself in the role of Chief Logistics Management, working very closely with the COO. Was he prepared for this? Not exactly. But he learned very quickly. "I now know how to take vitals on a baby. I caught a baby as it was being delivered. I wasn`t prepared or trained for a lot of things I did - but when there`s no one else around, the doctor looks at you and it`s like - you`re it." Fortunately for Brian, he landed at the best hospital in Haiti - even though it had plywood floors and curtained walls. People came or were transported there mostly for acute care and rehabilitation. He saw he share of wounds from gunshots and machete fights - one of the outcomes of the chaos caused by the country`s lack of government. While nothing can truly prepare you for the situation in Haiti, Brian found that the skills he had developed in college and through his experience at the Olympics were, for the most part, readily transferrable. "In sports event management, you are in charge of power sources, HVAC, crowd control, security. I used all of this down there. I just used my sports related skills in a different setting." Beyond logistics, however, Brian gained a new perspective on problems and teamwork. "When a generator goes down at a golf tournament, people get hot and cell phones go down - and think that`s tough to deal with. At the hospital in Haiti, a generator goes down and people`s lives are on the line. It`s amazing to see how people come together in circumstances like that - how they work together towards that goal of saving a life. I found it was at those critical moments when people were at their best, when we were really busy and focused on that goal. There is no time for pettiness, no consideration for seniority, no room for ego." Brian experienced one of his most uplifting moments one day when they brought a woman in for a C-section. She had been in labor for several days and would have died without medical help. Brian was assisting when they cut her open and lifted the twin baby boys out - and at that moment, just over the makeshift wall, he heard singing coming from the church service not many feet away. It had been going on all du