During his reporting in Haiti following the January 2010 earthquake, Gupta received a call from the aircraft carrier USS "Carl Vinson" that an earthquake victim, a 12-year-old girl, was aboard and needed a neurosurgeon. Gupta, a pediatric surgeon, Henri Ford, and two U.S. Navy doctors removed a piece of concrete from the girl's skull in an operation performed aboard the "Vinson". Ford later wrote that Gupta "proved to be a competent neurosurgeon".