ASN Responds to Disaster in Haiti

Rachel Shaffer
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The massive earthquake of 7.0 magnitude that hit Haiti Tuesday, January 12, resulted in an estimated 75,000 dead, 200,000 injured, and 1 million displaced people.

To help respond to this crisis, the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) immediately contacted other kidney-related organizations, including the International Society of Nephrology, the Kidney Care Emergency Response (KCER) Coalition and the Florida ESRD Network, the National Kidney Foundation, the Sociedad Latino-Americana de Nefrologia e Hipertension (SLANH), and the Society of Nephrology of the Dominican Republic (SNDR) as well as dialysis providers and industry organizations. ASN also worked with the U.S. government, Doctors Without Borders, the USNS Comfort, and Partners in Health.

Led by its Disaster Relief Task Force, ASN helped:

  • develop a protocol for crush injury currently employed in Haiti to reduce the incidence of AKI from rhabdomyolysis.

  • identify over 60 members who volunteered to travel to the region and provide care.

  • coordinate supplies generously donated by dialysis providers and industry to ensure medical providers had the items they needed to treat patients in crisis including dialyzers, dialysis machines, dialysis fluids, sodium polysytrene sulfonate for treatment of hyperkalemia, handheld portable systems for measurement of renal function, and serum electrolytes and dialysis catheters.

  • create a supply chain to rapidly deliver the items of greatest need.

  • support the health care infrastructure in the region.

  • establish daily conference calls for the nephrology community to coordinate relief efforts.

“Nearly 30 members of the nephrology community met daily by conference call during the crisis,” said Didier Portilla, MD, chair of the ASN Disaster Relief Task Force. “KCER organized these calls, which provided updates from nephrologists in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, assessed the health care infrastructure in these countries, and identified needs for physicians and nurses.”

“Dialysis providers and other organizations worked to target supplies to reach the areas where they were most needed,” said Mark Okusa, MD, FASN, chair of the ASN Acute Kidney Injury Advisory Group. “Due to logistical problems in transport to Port au Prince, Haiti, we focused on three cities in the Dominican Republic to rapidly transport supplies into Haiti.”

According to Portilla, “SLANH President Ricardo Correa-Rotter, MD, and SNDR President Sandra Rodriguez, MD, deserve tremendous credit for establishing this connection and saving lives, as do Dr. Okusa and Rajnish Mehrotra, MD, FASN.” Mehrotra chairs the ASN Dialysis Advisory Group.

ASN encourages its members and the rest of the community to contribute directly to entities specifically dedicated to providing disaster relief to Haiti, such as the American Red Cross or the William J. Clinton Foundation. A list of organizations collecting funds for the disaster is provided by InterAction through its website at http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/earthquake-haiti.

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