As members of organizations with missions to protect the health and wellbeing of others, many of us are wondering what we can do to help the communities hit by the storms. Prompted by these recent hurricanes, we have established a collaborative informal working group of clinicians involved in humanitarian and emergency response. The purpose is to identify and communicate what the greater Rutgers and RWJBarnabas Health communities are doing, and could be doing, to help in such disasters.

The International Surgical Health Initiative is a humanitarian non-profit organization that provides free surgical care to underserved communities, worldwide, regardless of race, religion, politics, geography or financial considerations.

The mission was centered at the Hospital de la Convention Baptiste d’Haiti (HCBH) in Cap-Haïtien. Dr. Toussant actively pre-triaged surgical candidates in the weeks before the ISHI team arrived. Marie Michele Sidney was also in communication with patients treated by her organization in need of surgical care and several of them traveled together by bus to HCBH for triage assessment.

A total of 47 cases were performed including 18 laparoscopic cases (a new record for ISHI). On-site training in all aspects of surgical flow from triage through post-operative care was performed for local staff and for medical students from the Medical Electives Trujillo Program. Two of our patients unfortunately had complicated post-operative courses but thanks to the teamwork with the local doctors at the Hospital Regional de Trujillo and Hospital Belen, one has been discharged and seen at follow up and is doing well and the other is recovering well under the watchful eyes of our local champions

Welcome to MiniMed International, a division of the NJMS MiniMed School. In existence since 2012, the program was founded by former MiniMed School students Ryan Chung, M.D., ’15 and Andrew Nouri, M.D., ‘15 in collaboration with Emeritus Professor Jacob Jay Lindenthal, Ph.D, Dr.P.H, Director of the NJMS MiniMed School. MiniMed International includes the participation of members of the New Jersey Medical and Dental School faculties who provide lectures, rounds and consults with colleagues in Huancayo, Peru during the academic year.

Ghana 2016 is ISHI’s fourth mission to the Tetteh Quarshie Memorial Hospital (TQMH) in Mampong, Ghana in what has become an annual event. ISHI was invited back to TQMH with the approval from the hospital leadership and regional tribal leaders to continue and expand upon the work done in previous years.

SHI conducted its third mission to the Philippines in January 2013 to Ormoc City in Leyte.. This mission was proposed by Mrs. Socorro Rogers, who has served on many ISHI Missions. Mrs. Rogers began the initial conversations with the officials at Ormoc District Hospital one year prior to the mission and identified it as a potential host hospital.

This was ISHI’s fourth trip to Kabala Government Hospital (KGH), but first since the Ebola crisis affected the country. After 3 annual trips from 2011-2013, with broken hearts, ISHI had to cancel the 2014 mission to KGH due to the crisis. We are extremely happy to finally return to our friends in Kabala, now that the crisis has passed. Our objective was to perform 50 free, safe surgeries, to provide didactic and clinical education (including the ACSCOT Basic Bleeding Control course), and to encourage knowledge exchange between the ISHI and KGH teams.

This was a once in a lifetime experience. We had the chance to see firsthand what it really means to have severe difficulties both in accessing and delivering healthcare to the population, and we were able to talk and receive extremely interesting insight from healthcare professionals. I think students can read as much as they want about struggles to access healthcare in the US and outside the US, but until you actually see on the field what it really means it is impossible to have a clear understanding of what this really means on a practical level Not only because it allowed us to perform and practice some of the clinical knowledge that we learned during our first year, but because it allowed us to keep everything in perspective and understand that different populations have different priorities. Moreover, it sparked even more my desire to become a doctor and work in underserved populations.