Doctors from OU Medicine Help in Haiti

An Oklahoma surgeon is packing his bags for Haiti after he received a phone call from the U.S. Military.

Monday, February 1st 2010, 5:34 pm

By: News 9

News9.com

OKLAHOMA CITY -- An Oklahoma surgeon is packing his bags for Haiti after he received a phone call from the U.S. Military.

OU Medicine Orthopedic Surgeon Doctor David Teague received a call from the U.S. Military Sunday night. His expertise is needed to take care of patients on the U.S. Naval Ship Comfort.

Doctor Teague will help correct patients suffering from 3-week-old fractures. He said the stories are tragic and heartbreaking.

"You try not to get caught up in the emotion of this. It's a very sad story of a patient that may have lost his or her whole family in this earthquake so you focus at appropriate times, on just taking care of the injury, but the human tragedy will be a big part of this I'm sure," said Dr. Teague.

Doctor Teague will leave for Haiti Tuesday.

Another doctor from OU Medicine just returned early Monday morning. Doctor Steven Smith organized a health clinic in Port Au Prince.

"I just saw things I never saw before. I had been to Asia with that earthquake and had never seen what I saw the last six days," said Dr. Smith.

Dr. Smith's team saw nearly 2,000 patients in the past eight days, averaging about 340 a day.