Amidst all of the election news and hand-wringing about the Wolverines latest loss was a wonderful story in the Detroit News on a medical missionary team from Michigan heading to Haiti, Michigan group returning to aid Haiti quake victims :
A week after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Dr. Karl Bandlien traveled there from Michigan to treat the countless sick and injured. Roughly nine months later, Bandlien is again answering the call to help.
Bandlien of Highland Township is one of about a dozen church members from Michigan departing today on a Christian relief mission to Haiti.
Despite the record amount of international aid following the disaster, scores of families are still living in encampments or on the streets. Living in unsanitary conditions, many are in poor health, Bandlien said. Those with untreated injuries will now need care for what have become chronic wounds, he said.
"That's the sad reality," said Bandlien, a 61-year-old surgeon at Oakwood Annapolis Hospital in Wayne. "We feel that this is a situation that is crying for a resolution, and we are going to do what we can."
Bandlien will join a medical team of clinicians from around the United States. Together, they will operate for one week a motorized clinic in Carrefour, a hillside town of about 400,000 that was the quake's epicenter. It is located 10 miles south of the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Nine months after the quake, only 2 percent of rubble has been cleared and 13,000 temporary shelters have been built — less than 10 percent of the number planned, according to the Associated Press. In January, a 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti — the poorest country in the western hemisphere — damaging the National Palace, U.N. headquarters and orphanages. The quake killed at least 230,000 people and left millions homeless. Also, a storm last month ripped through Port-au-Prince and destroyed thousands of tents, serving as a reminder of how vulnerable the displaced still are.
I am not too sure about the sponsoring group these folks are involved with but I am glad to see believers going to those in need.
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