The Director the Sheba Medical Centre the National Burn Center for Israel Professor Josef Haik arrived in Haiti last week to help patients who were severely injured when a fuel tanker crashed in the north of the county last year.
During the night of December 13 to 14, a tanker truck loaded with fuel overturned, under circumstances that are still unclear, at the eastern entrance to Cap-Haitien, Haiti’s second-largest city. The fuel tank truck crashed, then exploded, killing more than 75 people. Forty-seven more suffered burn injuries of varying degrees (20 with severe third-degree burns, 27 with light first-degree burns). Vehicles, motorcycles, and 20 houses in the vicinity caught fire as a result of the explosion.
Haik is leading the mission incorporation with the United States Burn Advocates Network (BAN) to the hospitals that are still overwhelmed with the wounded.
Prior to departing Israel, Haik said the team is prepared to help as many burn victims as possible.
“Unfortunately, a few months ago they had a big fire disaster, and they still have injured patients that we need to treat. We’re going to do as many surgeries as we can to try and help their wounds. We will [also] bring equipment they are lacking and teach them how to use it and leave it there so they can continue rehabilitating Haiti,” he added.
Haik, who also heads Sheba’s division of plastic surgery and is a professor at Tel Aviv University, has previously brought his expertise to Haiti.
In February 2020, on the 10th anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010, Haik led an international team of burn surgeons, sponsored by BAN, to set up the first pediatric laser for treating disfiguring burn scars in children at Sacre Coeur Hospital in Milot.
Dr Josef Haik has often undertaken humanitarian medical missions in countries such as Ukraine, Romania, Cameroon, Congo, and Guatemala.
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