A Summer with Mission of Hope: Undergraduate Brandon Moritz on Living and Working in Haiti
Brandon Moritz with the translators he worked with in Haiti
Brandon Moritz is a biomedical engineering student at the University of Arkansas. During the summer of 2017, he spent three months as a Medical Intern with Mission of Hope, Haiti. Below, he describes the experience and discusses what he learned:
This past summer I had the opportunity to live and serve in Haiti for three months. I was hired as a Medical Intern with Mission of Hope, Haiti to assist with operations and execution of their healthcare system in the region. Along with other Medical Interns and our Mobile Medical Clinic Director, Lauren Raschke, we led doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals from all over North America in providing healthcare to 18 different villages in our region of Haiti. We saw 5,400 people in the region through mobile clinics alone during my time there.
Moritz working in the pharmacy during a mobile clinic
I also was able to use my biomedical engineering knowledge to assist our Haitian prosthetist in the Prosthetics of Hope lab. Some men and women came in who still hadn’t walked since the devastating earthquake that occurred back in 2010 that cost them their leg, but some of my most rewarding work came from seeing people who hadn’t walked in years be able to take their first steps without the assistance of a crutch for the first time.