Independence doctor to lend medical assistance in Haiti

Dr. Don Potts saw the events of Haiti’s Jan. 12 major earthquake unfold on national television and said to himself: “I’ve got to go there.”

“I’d be more concerned about not going down there just because of my feelings,” said Potts, 79, a retired Independence family physician. “I expect the worst conditions possible to be in, both personally and medically.”

On March 16 through April 2, Potts will provide basic medical care to residents outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as part of Heart to Heart International, an Olathe, Kan.-based relief and development organization that provides volunteer services.

With expectations of serving between 40 to 50 patients each day, Heart to Heart will provide Potts’ medical supplies. He will live in a tent or under a canvas and plans to take a sleeping bag and an air mattress.

Potts said he would like to aid Port-au-Prince’s outlying communities, such as Gonaives, Jacmel and Deschapelles. While initial medical needs included broken and crushed limbs, Potts said he expects to encounter problems like diarrhea. He said good drinking water is difficult to find in Haiti. 

In the mid-1960s, Potts and Dr. Roy Schaefer, an Independence dentist, traveled to Haiti. On their first trip, they purposely didn’t take any medical equipment or medicine with them so they could just see what kind of need existed.

 The experience, Potts said, left him enamored with Haiti. At the time, about one doctor existed for every 10,000 residents, he said. Clinics were established throughout communities, and because some villages existed on mountain tops, Potts often traveled by donkey with his medical supplies.

Nearly five years ago, Potts also traveled twice with Heart to Heart International to aid in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

“It was pretty bad,” Potts said, “and I am certain that Haiti is going to be a lot worse.”

The Hurricane Katrina aftermath relief efforts, Potts said, showed him that he could tolerate 10- or 12-hour work days, seven days a week, for several weeks. Potts purchased a Haitian Creole to English medical dictionary to assist him on his trip. The Haitian Creole is one of the country’s two official languages, along with French, which Potts spoke a little while in the New Orleans area in 2005.

Overall, Potts made seven, two-week trips through the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s to Haiti. Potts and Schaefer, who both have Community of Christ ties, rounded up other Community of Christ volunteers to share their expertise in agriculture, water systems and food. 

“After we’d been there a while, we realized that we were kind of a drop in the bucket,” Potts said with a smile, “but on the other hand, several drops will help in a bucket sometimes.”

While in Deschapelles, Haiti, Potts noticed about 35 newborn babies with tetanus because of a ritual that involved rubbing dust in a baby’s umbilical cord before it was tied off. Yale University medical professionals led an effort to immunize the pregnant women so their children would have passive immunity to tetanus instead of attempting to stop the ritual, Potts said.

During his Haitian clinics – the last of which took place in the early 1980s – residents would walk between 20 to 25 miles a day when they received word of the health care available, Potts said. He saw a number of parasitic infections and tropical diseases then, including a hookworm that can enter the feet when people walk barefoot.

A better word than “need” exists for the citizens of Haiti, Potts said.

“The people down there are extremely friendly, extremely resilient – they’re happy people,” he said. “You see the devastation and the starvation and the malformations ... and those people go about their day singing to themselves or to others in a group.

“I’m sure people elsewhere are the same way, but I have a special love for them because of the fact that they are so destitute and they have so little to look forward to, and yet they are making their own happiness in the best way they can.”