Devastation after the Haiti Earthquake: a neurosurgeon's Journal.

ithin 24 hours of the incident, neurosurgeons arrived in Port au rince to provide medical care and assistance. Barth A. Green, .D., chairman of Neurosurgery at the University of Miami, led ne of these efforts as he has had a long-standing program to rovide medical care in the impoverished nation: Project Medshare, a nonprofit international aid organization at the Univerity of Miami. A300-bed tentmedical campuswasquickly erected andopened to ccept patients from the temporary United Nations (UN) medical ompound. The facility was immediately filled to capacity, with one ent housing a surgical suite equipped with four operating rooms nd connected to a 75-bed pediatric ward. A second tent housed the dult hospital, consisting of 225 beds (Figures 2 and 3). Volunteers, ncluding doctors, nurses, therapists, and engineers flew from the rojectMedishareCommandCenter inMiamioncharteredflights to taff this new facility. Dr.Greenwas joined by JohnRagheb,M.D., a pediatric neurosureon who had been performing third ventriculostomies to treat ydrocephalus inHaiti for years. Allan Levi, M.D., Ph.D., director of he University ofMiami Spine Program, and Ian Armstrong,M.D., a eurosurgeon from California, did triage and began treating the umerous spinal cord and head injured patients in an area of the ospital, which is to become a new specialized unit.