The team consisted of 4 people:

Babar K. Rao, MD, FAAD (New York)
Jose Luis Cruz, MD (Dominican Republic)
Omar Noor, MS3, (George Washington University)
Sean Shafi, MS2, (UNIBE - Universidad Iberoamericana)

Because we went independently and were not sponsored by an organization such as the Red Cross or the WHO, the only way for us to get into Port-Au-Prince was to fly into Santo Domingo and drive from there. Fortunately, we do an occasional free clinic in the Dominican Republic, so we were able to take advantage of the resources that enable us with those missions to get us into Haiti. The journey from Santo Domingo to Port-au-Prince was uneventful, but what would normally have been a 5 hour drive ended uptaking 9 hours because of road conditions and the congestion of all the aid and supply trucks.

The experience of just being within Port-au-Prince was humbling in itself. The degree of destitution is just incomprehensible: people everywhere you look with no food, no water, no place to sleep or even spend their days out of the harsh sun, and open wounds in need of immediate care. The most jarring concept is that there is no end insight to this transient state. These people are not waiting for an insurance payment to replace their belongings. There are no relatives to rely on for help because their entire families are facing the same obstacles, if they are even alive. There is no government to rely on for the same reason.

We offered our help wherever we saw the need; We provided medical services, but we also distributed water and supplies with the rest of the volunteers. It is clear that the need for goods and manpower here are not merely immediate - the intense level of the aid that is being provided now will need to be maintained long-term just to eventually make this city inhabitable again.