On a typical eight- hour shift, their traveling pharmacy would provide services to 160 patients and dispense about 300 prescriptions. The experiences of their mission remain vivid months later. Coming from a culture that has so much in the way of material prosperity, I was shocked to see the type of poverty there. My father owns a deli in a poor neighborhood of New York City, but I never saw poverty in New York City comparable to what we saw in rural Haiti. Haiti's continuing political and economic chaos have been compounded by major droughts, Chun explains.
People have to walk a long way just to get water, and often that is unclean.
There's so much malnutrition, especially among the children. We selected them based upon the most common diseases we were likely to encounter - hypertension, diabetes, infections. Even though we brought antibiotics, we could not dispense any requiring refrigeration because there was no refrigeration in the villages we visited. One item Whang wishes she'd brought more of is vitamins. At home, I have three or four bottles of vitamins on the shelf and keep buying more.