Karen, USA - Midwife experiences - helping to give birth in complete darkness

A Story from the Official Volunteer Ministers Blog

Karen Farrell is a midwife and a Scientology Volunteer Minister who lives in New England. When she heard about the Haiti earthquake on January 12, her first thought was that she needed to help. Four days later she was in Port-au-Prince with the medical and disaster relief team of doctors and nurses from the Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad, paramedics and Volunteer Ministers who boarded a flight in New York on January 16, chartered by the Church of Scientology to take medical personnel and supplies to Haiti.

Karen was assigned to General Hospital, where the facilities were woefully inadequate for the doctors and nurses working desperately to do something for the worst of the enormous numbers of earthquake victims. Overwhelmed with casualties, the medical staff could scarcely tend to women having babies. The Norwegian Red Cross had set up a small makeshift obstetric and surgical unit and welcomed the midwife and doctors newly arrived from America.