Dr. Gollotto and fellow health professionals with Medford-based Team Ange (Creole for angel) arrived in the Haitian seaside town of Cayes-Jacmel two weeks after the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated the country. The quake killed 300,000 and left survivors homeless and many with a variety of wounds and illnesses.

"No medical care had arrived there, so word spread very rapidly and it kept getting busier and busier," said the Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center anesthesiologist, who with his wife, Kathryn Gollotto, DO, coordinated the trip of the 13-member team and their thousands of pounds of supplies to the Dominican Republic and then to Cayes-Jacmel.

At a makeshift clinic at Centre Medical Emmanuel, a private hospital relatively unaffected by the quake, the team treated 300 to 400 patients daily. Surgeons operated around the clock on a variety of fractures and wounds, performing amputations if necessary. Patients also presented with infectious diseases, secondary wound infections, sepsis and dehydration. Inpatients were treated in tents with mattresses.

While people died from often-treatable diseases like tetanus, typhoid and malaria, the team has transported seven children and two adults to American hospitals for treatment. Dr. Gollotto, who has returned to Haiti since his initial 16-day January trip, recalled one of the men whose neck was fractured when a roof fell upon his head.

"The man shuffled around in partial paralysis. If he had stayed there and slipped or fell, he could have been totally paralyzed or worse," Dr. Gollotto said. "After a joint fusion in his neck, he's doing well."

Dr. Gollotto is not the only Lourdes physician donating time to healing Haiti. Cardiologist Thierry Momplaisir, MD, traveled there in January, and Carrie Paston, MD, an emergency room physician at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, spent the second week of March in Port-au-Prince with Catholic Health East's Global Health Ministry. Dr. Paston had previously traveled to Haiti, as well as Guatemala and Peru, with Global Health.

Dr. Paston and the Global Health professionals provided primary care to hundreds of patients at a clinic on the outskirts of one of the capital's many tent cities. They also worked in conjunction with a Connecticut aid organization that fits amputees with prosthetic limbs.

"It was much more organized than I expected. People are starting to get back to their normal lives, remove rubble and vendors are on the street, all of which is encouraging," she said. "A lot of people have medical issues, such as scabies, parasites and secondary wound infections. They definitely need a lot of help down there."

Dr. Paston acknowledged that rebuilding Haiti will take many years, but "the people are resilient."