Medical school volunteers who assisted after Maria convene rapid-response team

Buoyed by their disaster relief work in Vieques, Puerto Rico, which was ravaged by Hurricane Maria, alumni of the American University of Antigua’s Medical School, led by Dr. Bilal Khan, have convened a medical rapid response task force along the lines of Doctors Without Borders to help when such natural disasters strike again.

AUA, which is associated with Manipal University since its establishment in 2004, has owed its exponential growth and success largely to its Indian-American and South Asian-American student constituency and alumni, many of whom are top flight medical professionals in the U.S.

Khan was among the first students to graduate from AUA along with his Stony Brook University classmate and friend Dr. Pedro Torres, who led a medical team comprising AUA medical students into Vieques last month to provide medical services to the hurricane-stricken island.

Khan said the group is called CHAMP, for Community Health Alliance of Medical Professionals. Their role, he said, is to be ready if similar natural disasters strike in the area.

“We intend to partner up with certain hospitals and obviously our medical school—which has been very supportive –and also with the Brentwood Fire Department in Long Island [New York] and putting together different levels of training and health care providers,” Khan told India Abroad. He said after the hurricane “we reached out to some of our former AUA colleagues and almost immediately, a lot of our fellow alumni reached back to us, saying they were also interested.” They were ready to travel to Puerto Rico.

Khan, a critical care and emergency physician, said that AUA had also independently said they wanted to be a part of the effort. “They would support us and were proud of us and so we were able to start off with a core of our alumni.”

At first, he was looking for some effort to head over there to assist one of the big organizations, he said. “I’ve always had an interest in global health service, and whenever these things happen, I always try to see where I can fit in, and prior to this, I went to Vietnam two years ago, and that inspired me to do more global health-work,” said Khan, who was born in London. After making inquiries, he said, “it seemed like a lot of people reached back to me, saying, ‘We don’t know how we can get you down here [to Puerto Rico], but we have supplies, or we have a friend who has a pharmacy ready to donate medicines or money.’ I quickly realized that a lot of people don’t trust some of the big organizations, because of all the things they are hearing—whether it’s true or not, and it’s not my business — but it seemed like a lot of people had resources and the obstacle was trust.”

Then his former classmate Torres reached out. The two knew one another from undergrad days at Stony Brook and later at AUA. Torres told him there were a few missions and local groups and maybe they could all join forces. “I jumped at it,” he said. While still in the U.S. he got supplies together, organized the team and got the flights and fundraising in order while Torres handled things on his end from the island.

“And, that was really a challenge because with all the problems down there, it was really hard to reach people, but he was able to finally set that up,” he said.

Khan said the reason for focusing on Vieques was its remote location off the Puerto Rican coast. “It was a challenge to get supplies there,” he said. “And so our team too — an overnight flight to Puerto Rico–all 18 of us — and then Pedro picked us up in a big van and we drove to the ferry at four in the morning and went to Vieques and when we got there, we hit the ground running, working with the mayor, local priests and community leaders to set up our clinic and delegate tasks.

“It was really amazing,” he said. “The people were really happy that we were there—and a lot of them were asking us, ‘How did you know to come here?’ and they were really appreciative.”

Khan said the entire experience was “extremely fulfilling –to know that we were able to, at the very least, bring a lot of resources that people were offering and put that into actual use and support directly to these people, and that’s really what stood out.”

“Of course,” he said, “we were very realistic in that we only made a small dent to a big problem, but at least we got to give people hope and let them know that we are there to help and for them to keep their faith, keep their prayers — whatever that is helping them — to keep them going and hold on to and let them know the support would continue to come.”

Khan said that people in the island noticed there was support from the U.S. but obstacles too, so it was important to be able to return and show support as a team. The team that was in Vieques from Feb. 8 through Feb.11 provided a plethora of medical services as well as antibiotics, Tylenol, Ibuprofen and supplies for wound care.”

“So, basically, we would have all of the people who came, initially triaged and seen by the guys from the fire department, whom we had brought down with us for blood pressure checks” and other examinations, he said. “Of course, some people were very sick and we advised that they be shipped back to the main island and we worked with the mayor to get them on the ferry to the main island to get them immediate care, because we believed some of them were at high risk of getting a heart attack.” Others received hydration, assistance with regulating their blood sugar, wound care and treatment for asthmatics. “We saw a lot of mental health issues and so we had social workers with us, who worked with a lot of them.”

Khan said the entire experience now had made them “confident that it will work well in the future because we can take medical students down there for training, and they will get some experience. And, that way, more physicians will want to be part of a global health effort, in addition to what we are doing.”

Khan also said that CHAMP is putting together an infrastructure “because expediency is the name of the game.”

At least now, he said, the team has a track record. “This trip was very raw — we had no record and so people were supporting us with no previous evidence that we’ve done something like this. So that was encouraging and at the same time, in the future, I want to be able to provide people with some kind of proof and show them what we do so that people who don’t know us, will also support.”

This way, Khan said, both funding and a team will be at the ready as well as established connections for supplies at an affordable rate.

“We learned a lot of things and we learned how to do things better the next time, and having an organization will help us reach all of this goals as well. Now we have a core team,” he said.

He called the effort “a labor of love” because each volunteer team member paid their own flight and food, while the organizers, including him and Torres and AUA, found sponsors or paid for the medical supplies, chartered ferries between to and from Vieques and back and worked with a local nonprofit, A la Mano Por Puerto Rico, coordinating the logistics of volunteers’ camps and lodging.

AUA’s founder and president, Neal Simon told India Abroad that “it gives us great pride to see some of our distinguished alumni and students volunteer to provide medical services to Puerto Rico. Their selfless act of taking the time to use their medical skills and knowledge in Puerto Rico where the devastation from the hurricane made the need for medical care so important is something we can all be proud of.”