Houston Muslim physicians organized mobile clinics for Katarina relief efforts

Houston Muslim physicians in partnership with the city of Houston organized mobile clinics for Katarina relief efforts.

On 9/11/2005 Houston Muslim Physicians with the help of city of Houston organized two mobile clinics at St. Agnes church in South East Houston.

The planning for this ambitious idea started on Friday September 2nd 2005 when group of Houston physicians met with the mayor and his health care team in accompany with Mr. M J Khan our city council. The only agenda was how could we help our neighbors and our beloved city to coup with this catastrophic disaster.

City loved our idea of having mobile clinics to go to the poorest of poor and unaccounted for victims. Within next few days we formalized a talented team and the infra structure support. There were plenty of volunteers who pledged to donate time and money to help this unique effort to help victims and our city.

We met with the city officials again on Saturday 9/10 2005 and at the request of city mobilized our efforts quickly to have two mobile clinics ready for the next day.

Early in the morning we received phone calls from Drs. Williams and Osama (city directors) that the site at Saint Agnes church need immediate help. Without delay we responded with mobilizing two mobile clinics for that site. The Red Cross and other agencies, received us and they did formidable job to set us up quickly.

The scene was chaotic at the least as there were about 8000 people in the line for looking for variety of help. We setup two clinics one inside the church in collaboration with Red Cross and the other right out side in the parking lot. The paramedic team triaged patients and we saw critically ill patient. Our group consisted of many specialties and we helped each other out in many ways. The exact data is in the compiling process but be estimate that we saw approximately close to 150 patients.

Needless to say that the victims and local city officials appreciated our effort very much and we became the uncalled heroes of that day, as we were not expected there. We met with the mayor and his team again after the camp and he showed his appreciation. Many media outlets came and visited us with reports televised the same evening. This was a true team effort from many Houston physician and local leaders.

We anticipate that this partnership with the city is not a one-time effort as we are planning for more mobile clinics and exploring other ideas of expanding our partnership to helping our city. We anticipate that our organized disaster relief efforts will help city to reach us for any future help in the time of need and this is what citizens are for.

To go further we are in the process of exploring to sponsor a joint seminar with the city of Houston entitled “Teach the Teachers”. We know that the most neglected and voiceless victims of violence and tragedy are the children. They go through this mental trauma and do not know how to express themselves. Studies have shown that if these victims are not intervened immediately the mental health remains affected after many years. We have proposed to offer a working training seminar in collaboration with the city of Houston entitled “teaching the teachers” a team of world renowned psychiatrist will run this seminar to teach local teachers and other allied health professional dealing with these children as first responders. This seminar will help them how to intervene in children with trauma. Time and date of these seminars will be announced soon.

Submitted by Dr. Rizwan Naeem