El Paso Doctors In Haiti: One Gets The Nickname ‘The Pregnant Doctor’

El Paso, Texas – Dr. Marco Diaz and Dr. Leonardo Loaiza, both assistant professors at Texas Tech University Health Science Center Paul L. Foster School of Medicine, are in Haiti to help victims of last week’s earthquake.

The doctors of medicine, who were contacted by the U.S. Coast Guard to help, arrived in Haiti at the beginning of this week.

Diaz and Loaiza sent pictures to colleaguesshowing where they are living while in Haiti.

A portion of Loaiza’s latest e-mail updating colleagues is below:

“It’s very interesting to see how communications are managed here. What was supposed to be a UN medical center was in reality a building in a slum of Haiti that one New York journalist found without medical service. Anyway, I went with two orthopedic surgeons and two translators.

We saw several cases of over-infected wounds. In this case, not as bad as to amputate but certainly to have medical care. I got the nickname by the Haitians of ‘the pregnant doctor,’ not because I’m fat but because I got to see at least 10 pregnant ladies. All they wanted to know was that their babies were fine. After all these days of seeing sad cases, thesepatients brought a wonderful fact: life goes on!! I think that at leastsix of them will deliver in two to three weeks.

Our patient with Tetanus died after a very slow agony. Five minutes later, the antitoxin arrived. Only one friend was with him.

Tomorrow we will have a very interesting day. Since (there are more of us) now, a schedule was proposed. We, the three of us, counting a doctor from New York, will go to the slum to see more new patients. We will try to get to places where no cars have access. Let’s see how many more pregnant women we’ll see. I will send you pictures tomorrow.

I will try to sleep.”