UNMC has contacted 20 people to potentially deploy to Haiti this weekend.
The group was selected from a large pool of potential volunteers and represents the first of multiple waves of volunteers that the medical center plans to send to Haiti as the country recovers from the earthquake that struck Jan. 12.
“We are so pleased that there has been such an outpouring of volunteerism and desire to help in response to the crisis in Haiti,” said Rubens Pamies, M.D., vice chancellor for academic affairs, who along with College of Public Health Dean Ayman El-Mohandes, M.B.B.Ch., M.D., M.P.H., leads the medical center’s response to the Haitian tragedy.
The first volunteers meet the following essential criteria:
- They are clinical specialists in the fields requested by the U.S. State Department;
- They have current passports;
- They are not currently University of Nebraska students or medical residents, whose travel in this situation is prohibited by NU policy;
- They are employees of UNMC, UNMC Physicians or The Nebraska Medical Center; and
- They are willing and ready to fund their own travel to Florida by this Saturday to meet up with the other volunteers.
More opportunities for others to travel to Haiti are forthcoming. Send an e-mail to gtorre@unmc.edu to have your name entered into a database of volunteers.
Those with questions regarding UNMC’s Haitian relief efforts can contact Magda Peck, Sc.D., associate dean for community engagement and public health practice in the UNMC College of Public Health, at mpeck@unmc.edu.