Press Release

VCU Students Save Lives in Haiti

Students Work in Haitian Hospital

AJ Meissgeier stands in front of an all-too-familar scene in Port-au-Prince. (Photo provided by AJ Meissgeier)

RICHMOND, Va., March 1 (UPI) -- After working through the night, A.J. Meissgeier found her in the courtyard around 10 a.m.

She had been fortunate to survive being impaled by corrugated tin.   In the mountains where she lived, emergency gastrointestinal surgery saved her life by removing more than a foot of large intestine and part of her stomach.

She walked for two weeks with a broken pelvis to a hospital in Port-au-Prince.   She waited there in the heat for two days until Meissgeier found her.

This was only one of many inspiring moments Meissgeier said he experienced on his recent trip to Haiti.

Meissgeier and a fellow Virginia Commonwealth University student, Eugene Bednov recently traveled to work in a Port-au-Prince hospital, offering medical assistance to victims of the earthquake that destroyed much of the country.

Meissgeier and Bednov traveled to Haiti Jan. 28 with help from

Airline Ambassadors, a nonprofit organization providing airfare for medical personnel to developing countries and disaster areas.

“Flying over, you could see some of the slums but you couldn’t really see how bad it was,” Meissgeier said.

Bednov expected a lack of medical supplies, chaos and a poor situation politically.

“I was not expecting the amount of damage and the amount of instability and the amount of disorder that is there,” Bednov said. “That was kind of a shock.”

Meissgeier and Bednov helped doctors and nurses examine more than 1,000 patients who made it to the hospital over eight days. They participated in emergency surgeries that included amputations, appendectomies and orthopedic surgeries.

The VCU students used the medical training they had received as members of the National Guard.

They took to Haiti almost $700 that their fraternity, the VCU chapter of Delta Chi, had raised for earthquake victims. That money helped pay the salaries of Haitian hospital employees who had been working without pay for two weeks, said Dale Mohr, a fellow volunteer and member of the National Guard.

Centre Du Diagnostic Treatment Integre -- Hopital Sacre-Coeur was one of the few hospitals standing after the earthquake. The facility was receiving 200 to 400 patients a day, weeks after the disaster.

The hospital was so overwhelmed that tents were set up in the surrounding courtyards where patients recovered from major surgeries while others sometimes waited days for medical attention.

Surprised by the lack of medical care during the evening, Meissgeier and Bednov decided to cover the night shifts during their time at the hospital. They organized the hospital’s pharmacy during their first night. That allowed doctors to more rapidly treat patients and probably saved lives.

“We probably had about 150 patients that were in the courtyard,” Mohr said. “A.J. would come in at night and work the night shift because all of the aid doctors would come in and do their thing during the day, and then they would just go.”

“When we got there, it was total disarray and you couldn’t find anything,” said Gaylene Clark, a fellow volunteer and emergency room nurse from California. “They did an amazing job -- they really did.”

Meissgeier's and Bednov’s efforts to help the Haitian people have not ended with their return to Richmond. They are working with the VCU chapter of Delta Chi to raise $15,000 for hospital reconstruction in Haiti.

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