Team of Carle Doctors, Other Health Care Professionals Plan for Haiti

Teams of American health care workers are still heading to Haiti, more than a year after an earthquake left much of the heart of that country in ruins.

Amanda Frye is leading a team called "Field of Dreams for Haiti" - it's a team of 17 nurses, doctors and other volunteer health professionals from Carle Foundation Hospital. They're raising funds to help them buy supplies and complete their trip, which begins next month.

Frye hopes her group will be able to perform hundreds of surgeries during their one-week stay -- she says it will be packed with work but well worth the effort. "We love what we do up here, but it's a nice break to go down there and to be able to treat people who are grateful and need us and know that we're just practicing simple medicine -- no politics, just good people who have a lot of love to share," Frye told WILL's Celeste Quinn on Monday's Afternoon Magazine.

Frye says her group is headed to the only critical-care hospital currently operating in Haiti, though there are a number of small regional clinics.

Oral/maxillofacial surgeon Cole Anderson says more than a year after the earthquake that ravaged Haiti's largest city, the country is still struggling to provide basic emergency care. He says it's hard for an American to imagine the need: "For someone who's uninsured and doesn't have health care (in the United States), there's urgent and emergent health care available in the emergency room and people won't be turned away. Down in Haiti, that's not true. There just aren't people to provide the care."

Among the fundraising projects is an effort by area hair salons to donate a portion of their proceeds this weekend to the trip, but people can also make a donation online through the Carle Development Foundation's website: http://www.carle.org. They've also set up a Facebook page for people to follow their activities while they're in Haiti.