Haitians get medical care in Philadelphia

Three Haitian women are getting treatment at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and a 4-year-old boy from Haiti is at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

While medical professionals are deploying to Haiti to help the ill and wounded, victims of last week’s earthquake are also under the care of doctors in Philadelphia.  Three Haitian women are getting treatment at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and a 4-year-old boy from Haiti is at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Dr. Richard Shannon is Chair of the Department of Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

He says the patients were flown in from Port-au-Prince Sunday morning through a partnership with a Boston non-profit, US AID, the U-S Department of State, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Shannon: Their injuries were largely very serious, life-threatening crush injuries to the extremities.  They involve open fractures of the bones in the lower leg and extensive tissue death and necrosis from the pressure of the heavy cement and materials that rested on those legs for many hours.

Shannon says if the patients had stayed in Haiti, it is very clear they would have died.  The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania is paying for the patients’ care.  He says the hospital plans to send a team of doctors and nurses to the Haitian capitol early next week.