When Hurricane Dorian hit her home, Christine Marshall—a nurse from Freetown, Grand Bahama, who works for the Public Hospitals Authority—says she and her two children were the luckiest in their neighborhood: they only had to endure four inches of standing water in the house. Christine remembers empty boats floating between homes, and—thinking about the storm …
Kristin Hortman, a native of Mainz, Germany, recently volunteered for International Medical Corps in Grand Bahama as part of our response to Hurricane Dorian. Here, she remembers her experiences serving the people of Grand Bahama as a volunteer pharmacist. From mid-October until December 2019, I volunteered for International Medical Corps and Pharmacists Without Borders, ensuring …
At 4:24 a.m. local time on January 7, Puerto Rico was hit by a 6.4 magnitude earthquake along its southern coast—the strongest in a string of escalating seismic activity that started on December 28. The quake triggered safety mechanisms at power plants in the area, where the majority of the island’s power generation capacity is …
Typhoon Phanfone made landfall in Eastern Samar of the Eastern Visayas region of the Philippines at 4:45 p.m. local time Tuesday, December 24. A Category 2 typhoon, Phanfone ultimately affected more than 2.1 million people and displaced more than 145,000. Heavy rains and strong winds damaged some 406,000 homes and 30 health facilities, and brought …
“I’m okay…” says Joe Tate, his statement trailing off like a question. “Well, my body’s strong,” he clarifies. “But my head and my heart…” Those two things are more complicated. But they’re the things that hurt the most. We encounter Joe in McLeans Town, a small and tightly knit community that our International Medical Corps …
It’s not often that a physician in the midst of a seven-year neurosurgery residency deploys on a humanitarian response mission. But Myron Rolle says he put his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on a brief hold to join an emergency response by International Medical Corps in the Bahamas to care for survivors of …
“It was so beautiful here you couldn’t believe it,” says William. “We lived here and we couldn’t believe how beautiful it was.” He says this while standing in front of a boat submerged in what used to be his front yard. Over his head, the remains of his ravaged beachfront house droop against a stunning …
In a fast-break humanitarian emergency, medical and healthcare volunteers form the lifeblood of an International Medical Corps response. They are selected from a roster of vetted professionals who have expressed interest in disaster response work, or from a partner professional group, such as the Registered Nurse Response Network. Though they come with different skills and …
