DOMINICA – Delaware doctors to provide medical aid to Caribbean island

A group of Delaware doctors plan to head to the Caribbean in the coming weeks to provide medical aid in the wake of disastrous Hurricane Maria.

Dr Reynold Agard, a Newark internist and president of the Delaware Medical Relief Team, hopes more than 100 doctors, surgeons, nurses and pharmacists will head to the small island of Dominica, one of the first Caribbean islands hit by the Category 5 storm on Monday.

At least 15 people on the island of 72,000 have been killed. The country’s hospital has been without power since Monday and the U.S. State Department has arranged evacuation efforts for U.S. citizens on the island.

On Friday, Agard reached out to the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which is helping coordinate relief efforts for the Caribbean islands. He figured he’d organize the shipment of basic food necessities.

Two weeks ago, Agard and a group of doctors came back from a relief trip in Trinidad. They saw about 5,000 patients and helped feed about 15,000 people, he said. They’ve also sent doctors to Haiti and Nepal when earthquakes devastated both countries.

Agard said the medical team will go to Dominica because it’s a small, sovereign island. Unlike the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, which are U.S. territories, Dominica doesn’t have the same access to America’s resources.

Unlike other natural disasters, Hurricane Maria has wiped out most of the country’s infrastructure. Agard expects the doctors to be working out of tents.

“It will be almost like wilderness medicine,” he said.

Right now, he plans on sending small groups of doctors to the island two weeks at a time, with groups overlapping by a day. The doctors could be heading to the island as soon as Oct. 2.

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