Letter from former member Angela Tobias
I am in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, working for a couple of weeks in a free clinic run by a federation of mainly Lutheran and Episcopal churches. I am awed by the scale of both the need and the willingness of people to help address it.
Christus Victor, the Lutheran church where this relief organization is based, is a church of about 600 members in Ocean Springs (just east of Biloxi on the coast) who up until a month or two ago still had a big hole in the roof of its sanctuary. None the less, Christus Victor together with its partner churches has housed and fed three hot meals a day to 100-200 volunteers daily for almost five months. They also run a distribution center where 150-250 cars a day drive through to receive food and household items. They also provide case management services, though these are often staffed with untrained lay person volunteers, with the very occasional social worker coming through. They also help staff and administer three free clinics spread out along the Mississippi gulf coast - one in Ocean Springs, one in Biloxi, and one in Long Beach, which is west of Gulfport. They also send out multiple work crews daily to move furniture, muck out houses, do roofing, and many other assorted manual labor/construction jobs for people in need all over the Mississippi gulf coast area.
Still, there is so much more to do. Whole towns are still flattened, with barely any signs of life, and so many who live here are still nursing wounds. Debris clearance and reconstruction are going on everywhere you look, but it hardly seems to be making a dent in the task. Laborers have flooded the coastal region, occupying all of the hotel rooms not already taken by displaced locals. Many of them are undocumented Latinos, so in many places on the gulf coast for the first time there is a large Latino/Spanish speaking population. Unfortunately, just like there are sham contractors out cheating people and people trying to sell flood-damaged cars without declaring the water damage, there are also employers taking advantage of the undocumented status of many of the laborers.
The clinics in Ocean Springs and Biloxi each generally see between 20-40 patients a day. Many people are having trouble affording their medications, many have lost their doctors to the storm, and many have lost or never had insurance in the first place. The clinic in Long Beach is a “MASH unit”, a tent in a field, where patients are examined about five feet from each other at work stations. There are usually multiple doctors working to see between 40-160 patients a day. All the clinics are decently stocked with a variety of common medications, but of course we have a wishlist.
There have usually been 4-6 doctors, here to staff the clinics at any given time. Most doctors rotate as needed though the three clinics, and give tetanus boosters to any of the other volunteers who need them in the mornings. We also serve as pharmacists and nurses whenever needed, and occasionally makeshift dentists in a pinch, as you would in most free clinics and/or medical mission settings. The local community health centers have responded also but they are limited by their staffing and resources like everyone else.
Anyone reading this who has maybe been thinking about volunteering or sending help, please do, even if it is months from now. There is months and months worth of work left to do here, and they need all the help they can get.
Angela’s wishlist and more information and pictures can be found at www.christusvictordisasterresponse.org.