Auroraadvocate.com - Local man is aiding Haiti medical effort

by Holly Schoenstein

Reporter

Aurora -- When her brother-in-law called during the late afternoon Jan. 12, local resident Taffy Fadoul was working on her laptop.

Had she heard there was an earthquake in Haiti, he asked? Was her physician husband, who was working in Haiti, OK?

Taffy, the mother of a senior and a sophomore at Aurora High School and a seventh-grader at Harmon School, searched the Internet for more information. She found nothing.

Continuing her day, she dropped off her son at a hitting lesson that evening. Her brother-in-law called again. Is she sure he's OK?

Because she was driving, Taffy asked her daughter to text her husband, Dr. Antoine Fadoul. He texted back confirming he was fine.

When her daughter forwarded his text to her, Taffy was relieved.

"I didn't realize it was a major earthquake," Taffy said. "I wasn't afraid; fear was never an issue. I just felt for the people. The country was already devastated. It's just more misery on top of the misery they already had."

Antoine arrived back in Haiti on Jan. 11 after visiting his family in Aurora during the holidays.

The 56-year-old returned to work for Management Sciences for Health [MSH], the international nonprofit organization that strives to improve health services in developing countries.

He directs a project called Supply Chain Management System, for which he manages HIV/AIDS commodities for all United States government-funded project sites across Haiti. He's in charge of ordering and tracking supplies for clinical trials.

He was supposed to return to Haiti on Jan. 10, but an 8.5-hour power outage at Cleveland Hopkins Airport delayed his flight.

AT THE END of his first day back at work, he was in a meeting with a co-worker when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit, collapsing two walls and seriously damaging the others of his office building in the suburb of Petionville near the Montana Hotel.

His two colleagues hid under a desk, and when the earthquake was over, they walked out of the building. Neither were injured.

Antoine's focus immediately shifted across the street to the rubble where moments before had stood three houses.

"We knew there were people in there," Antoine wrote in an e-mail to the Advocate. "A few volunteers helped bring them out, and we administered immediate medical care, such as cleaning major wounds, stopping bleeding, immobilizing broken bones, etc."

The three victims survived, and later Antoine learned they were U.S. citizens. He and his colleagues medically treated 20 people that night.

"About three of every four houses around us collapsed or had major damage. As far as I know, there are still bodies under the rubble in some of the houses on our street, but none in the ones immediately around us," he said.

Antoine has been living in an MSH warehouse a few miles from his office, where workers normally package and ship supplies to project sites. There was no visible damage to the warehouse or the supplies stored in it, he said.

Taffy and the children have been communicating with Antoine mostly through text messages since the earthquake.

She said her family in Aurora is functioning as normal because they are used to her husband working away from home.

"OUR FAITH is strong," Taffy said. "He didn't go back until Monday, and God knew that wasn't going to happen until Tuesday. God knew that's where he needed to be. I believe because of the talents and abilities God gave him, that's where he needed to be."

In the weeks following the earthquake, Fadoul's job focus has shifted.

"We're concentrating our efforts on dispatching essential products to about 40 sites mainly in the capital [Port-au-Prince]; we have distributed more than 20 tons [of supplies] so far," Antoine said.

"We're operating under emergency mode, of course. Our regular operations are mainly suspended, and all of our efforts are geared toward helping with the disaster relief."

As of Jan. 21, various news sources had reported the death toll from the earthquake and its aftermath could reach into the low hundreds of thousands.

Antoine usually comes home every couple of months, but because he's helping with disaster relief in Haiti, Taffy's not sure when he'll be home next.

"It's always wonderful to see him. I don't know if it's going to be different this time," she said.

Antoine has worked as the director of the project for three years and has lived in Haiti for nearly three decades.

He and his wife met in Haiti in 1985 when he was doing his medical school residency and she was working at a orphanage her mother -- Shirley Greenslade of Aurora -- founded in Haiti. They were married in 1989.

Antoine earned his medical degree in pediatrics in Haiti and a master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He is a 1972 graduate of a Catholic school in Berirut, Lebanon.

Taffy graduated from Solon High School in 1979.

A number of organizatioiins are conducting Haiti relief efforts. Among them are the Red Cross, World Vision, Save the Children, Cathiolic Relief Services, Lions Club International and Portage County Senior Services Center.

E-mail:

hschoenstein@recordpub.com

Phone: 330-688-0088 ext. 3152