March 19, 2010 | A team from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), including orthopaedic surgeon Ruth Thomas, M.D., is leaving March 20 for a weeklong medical mission to earthquake-devastated Haiti.

Thomas will chronicle her time in Haiti on a blog created for the trip. She will be among a team of seven from Arkansas, including six from UAMS: Thomas, orthopaedics fellow Vinayak Sathe, M.D., anesthesiologist Majid Saleem, M.D., Kelly Rusher, R.N., Kathy Sexton, R.N., and orthopaedic technician Carlos Lewis.

The trip was organized through the group Help Haiti Now, which has operated an orphanage and health clinic in Haiti. Thomas and the Arkansas team will relieve a team from Oklahoma City that has been working at a hospital in Pierre Payen, about 35 miles from Port Au Prince. The hospital is one of the few still operational following the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 and injured an estimated 300,000.

“We are excited to be able to make the trip and go help,” Thomas said. “We anticipate we will see a lot of fractures that have healed in bad positions and require revision.

“I suspect we’ll be taking care of infected bones and wounds that require debridements, skin coverage and dressing changes.”

Thomas is a veteran of several medical missions, including visits to Africa and Southeast Asia. She chairs the Humanitarian Committee for the American Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Society. It was a colleague in that organization who went on an earlier mission to Haiti that got Thomas connected with Help Haiti Now.

Thomas noted this was the first time in her medical mission experiences that she has been with colleagues from UAMS, since she usually travels with AOFAS teams.

“I am hopeful that they will become as addicted to the experience as I have and that we can do more trips in the future,” Thomas said.

The group will first fly to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where they will meet team members coming from Washington and Kansas. Then they will leave for Haiti.