Healing Hands for Haiti is a non-profit organization
founded in 1999 by Jeff Randle M.D. with the goal of
providing prosthetic and orthotic services and training to
the people of Haiti. The organization was started in Salt
Lake City, Utah with only a handful of people. The
organization has grown to include more than 10 medical
teams from all over North America. In the year 2000
HHH opened its Kay Kapab Clinic in Haiti. It is run by
teams of HHH volunteers and several staffed Haitians.
Over the past ten years, over twenty five thousand
patients have been treated there.
The January 2010 earthquake destroyed the clinic and
HHH has suffered a major setback. With no buildings
and very limited supplies, HHH is now forced to work out
of tents and with limited resources when the need for
their services is even greater. Despite the huge setback
and scope of the disaster, HHH continues to serve the
people of Haiti.
Siblings and relatives of WesTech employees are
among the founding and active members of HHH and
continue a humanitarian effort that has spanned many
years. Cory Bagley a pilot, and aircraft mechanic, and
his wife Lisa, a nursing administrator at Intermountain
Health Care Hospital of Salt Lake City, are parents of
Dustin Bagley, a drafter and designer at WesTech
Engineering. Both founding members of HHH, they have
accompanied the Utah Hospital Task Force to Port Au
Prince. The group is 120 strong and includes both
medical and construction professionals who are helping
to rebuild. The task force took three weeks worth of
military rations and bottled water with them; they are
sleeping in army tents in the clinic compound with US
military providing security.
They also carried with them a Hydraid BioSand Filter
that WesTech is helping produce which will help to bring
potable water to under-developed areas of the world.
They hope to build several more of the filters to provide
water for the clinic while the infrastructure is repaired.
With the help of the 82nd Airborne unit, they set up a
MASH-like tent, and opened the compound on Saturday
January 30. They treated 175 patients that first day.
Treatment continues today with the doctors and nurses
and technicians working 16 hour shifts. Treatment has
shifted from the initial horrendous injuries to a steady
stream of patients needing treatment of resulting
infections.
For more information about Healing Hands for Haiti see
www.healingh
andsforhaiti.org
