Bayfront medical team doing what they can for Haiti

Frederic Guerrier is a native of Haiti. He now has a medical practice in St. Petersburg, but several times a year he travels back to his Island nation home to help at health clinics.

"I just left there in June, and things were bad there then," he said.

Things are much worse now. The United Nations currently estimates more than 111,000 people died in the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The doctor said he knew he had to return to help,

"Whatever my eyes see, my hands have to touch, that's what we gonna do," Guerrier said. "We're just going to do whatever we can."

Guerrier is going with a group of medical professionals from Bayfront Medical Center. Their trip was organized in just six days by Michael Pinson, founder of the Pinson Foundation.

"We have 6,000 pounds of medical supplies and we are on our way," said Pinson as he waited to get on a chartered American Airlines flight leaving Miami for Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital.

Pinson says he watched news reports of the earthquake, heard about the problems that have followed and was compelled to act.

"We've got a lot of real time reports that the military is not releasing food or water to the aide workers," he said. "There's no medication down there; there's no anesthesiology. There are amputations going on Civil War-style.

"There are thousands of people dying, and frankly, as a business owner, I couldn't take it anymore," Pinson said.

Tina Aultman is one of the Bayfront nurses who volunteered to go.

"This is what I'm on this earth for," she said. "This is what I want to do."

Amy Callies is an emergency room nurse at Bayfront. As the flight arrived over Port-au-Prince, she could see buildings near the airport that collapsed during the earthquake. On the ground at the airport she immediately noticed U.S. military aircraft and equipment. Armed soldiers from the U.S. Army and the United Nations patrolled the airport.

"I've been to Haiti twice beforehand, and this experience is already way different," she said.

After landing, the team from St. Petersburg planned to travel 15 minutes from the airport to help a clinic set up outside at the Haitian Gospel Mission.

Callies said the conditions they face will be far different from what they are used to at their hospital.

"I come from a state-of-the-art [operating room] at Bayfront and sterile technique is everything, and we're always worried about infection rate, and right now we're just trying to save peoples lives."

The medical team plans to stay eight days.