MSU, Sparrow to send relief team to Haiti

---

Tweet

MSU and Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital are teaming up to help relief efforts in Haiti by sending representatives to the country on Wednesday.

Together, they are sending five people to Haiti to assess what aid MSU and Sparrow can offer the disaster relief in Haiti. University spokesman Jason Cody said this will be the first trip to Haiti with a second trip in the works.

Sparrow’s Chief of Medicine Michael Clark said the hospital and MSU came together during a monthly meeting and decided there were opportunities for the two to coordinate their efforts.

Clark is one of the people taking the trip to Haiti, along with president and founder of Doctors United for Haiti Sidney Coupet and Reza Nassiri, director of MSU’s Institute of International Health and assistant dean in the College of Osteopathic Medicine.

The initial trip is for the representatives to gauge where their efforts can be best utilized. Clark said they hope to visit three hospitals — Albert Schweitzer Hospital, Sacre Coeur Hospital and Justinian Hospital­ — a damaged medical school and a nursing school during their travels.

“We want to listen, mainly and find out what their needs are,” Clark said. “What people from the (United States) don’t realize, often we have good intentions but it isn’t often what the people need.”

Nassiri, who spearheaded the MSU efforts, called the trip a “reconnaissance need assessment” to determine where the best place for MSU and Sparrow would be. He said both MSU and Sparrow have tremendous experience in the medical field, which is needed not only to help rebuild Haiti, but also to get medical institutions back on track.

“We’re talking about a combination of poverty and health needs, along with what I call post earthquake urgent care that puts us at MSU and Sparrow Hospital at the forefront of our humanitarian mission to provide help to the people of Haiti,” Nassiri said.

Although no monetary contributions can be made, Nassiri said the group wants to help re-establish curriculum at the medical and nursing schools they plan to attend. Another option would be to send Haitian medical students to Michigan to receive technical training in the medical field, Nassiri said.

Despite preparing himself for the trip, Clark said he is unsure of what he and the four others will experience in Haiti and what knowledge he will bring back to help those in need.

“I’ve been trying to prepare myself for the sights, the sounds, the smells that I’m going to see,” Clark said. “They’re probably not going to even come close to what I’m going to experience.”

---