Sioux City Doctor Headed to Haiti

KTIV Channel 4 of Sioux City reports:

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KTIV) - A Sioux City doctor is answering the call for relief in Haiti. Rick Colwell leaves for a six day mission to the earthquake ravaged region on Sunday.

The trip will mark Colwell's third humanitarian effort overseas. He went to Gaza in 2009. He also visited Pakistan in 2005 after an earthquake struck that region.

Colwell is the only mid-west member of the Islamic Medical Assistants of North America, a group comprised of E-R docs like himself, as well as an anesthesiologist and even a plastic surgeon.

He's traveling to Haiti to help more than just the emergency needs of earthquake victims.

"In a country as poor as Haiti, you have a lot of chronic illness. Those people are still sick, the ones that lived, they're still sick. They have no where to go," he explains.

Colwell says getting to Haiti is a "logistical nightmare" for groups like his. It's important for them to be set-up ahead of time so they don't become part of the problem when they arrive.

Luckily, humanitarian groups are closely connected and they were able to find a permanent relief camp in Haiti that will allow them set-up their own base.