Mediabooklet 091713 lr

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www.LiveBeyond.org in the NEWS

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Transcript of Mediabooklet 091713 lr

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www.LiveBeyond.org

in the NEWS

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Couple sell everything to serve Haitians By Vicky Travis, The Tennessean

April 23, 2013!

A Nashville-area surgeon and his wife are giving up the good life to fulfill a dream they've had since they were high school sweethearts in the 1970s.

David and Laurie Vanderpool are selling their house in Brentwood so they can move to Haiti. They run the non-profit agency LiveBeyond (formerly Mobile Medical Disaster Relief. (Photo: George Walker IV, The Tennessean).

BRENTWOOD, Tenn. -- We're supposed to work hard, make money and retire well. Right? That's the American dream.

For 40 years, Dr. David Vanderpool and his wife, Laurie, of Brentwood, have had another dream.

The Vanderpools are selling everything and moving to Haiti to serve medical, educational and spiritual needs.

"I've been giddy since September when we made the decision to go," said Laurie Stallings Vanderpool. "We're being promoted to something really grand." Vanderpool is selling LaveMD, his Brentwood practice that fixes varicose veins and does

aesthetic treatments such as liposuction and Botox. They have a contract to sell their home. They're giving away or selling the contents. They're also selling three cars and a farm in Dickson.

The Vanderpools, who recently announced their decision, have dreamed about doing this since they were high school sweethearts in the '70s in Texas. As they raised their three children in Texas and in Brentwood, mission trips were constant. With their youngest now a freshman at Texas A&M, the time to move is now. "It's sad that it shocks people," said Cheryl Reed, a longtime friend who has been on 16 trips around the world with Vanderpool's Live Beyond medical mission nonprofit.

"They make us think," Reed said. "They're so bold, so courageous."!

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During his 20-plus years as a trauma surgeon in Texas, Vanderpool held indigent clinics on the weekends, with the whole family helping. They moved to Tennessee in 2000. Three years later, he opened LaveMD to fund missions and to have a more controllable schedule to allow for multiple mission trips per year. Vanderpool started medical missions to Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake. Since then, Live Beyond, formerly called Mobile Medical Disaster Relief, bought 63 acres in Thomazeau, an area outside Port-au-Prince with about 200,000 residents, where the Vanderpools will live and work.

Conversation with Vanderpool, 53, is often challenging and ends with, "You should come with us."

"Here we are, the most affluent country and we're obese," he said. "Go two hours off our border and 80 percent of the children don't get enough food.

Dr. David Vanderpool packs books into boxes. He and his wife are selling their Brentwood home, his practice, three cars and a farm in Dickson and moving to Haiti. / George Walker IV / The Tennessean!

"We spend money on ourselves," he said. "We're Pharisees." 'Jesus left the ultimate gated community' A happy dinner crowd of 500 attended a fundraiser last week for Live Beyond in The Factory at Franklin.

They fell silent as they listened to Vanderpool’s stories of desperation in Haiti. He told about a mom to two young children with a new hungry baby girl. The mom was starving and her milk had dried up. There was no room for the baby at an orphanage, so she killed the baby with a rock rather than watch it starve to death.

“Can you feel the gut-wrenching poverty that would make you kill a baby?” he asked the crowd.

“Why does this happen?” he said. “Many ask, ‘Why does a good God allow this to happen?’

“I have another question. Why do good Christians allow this to happen?

“Go into all the world,” said Vanderpool about Jesus’ Great Commission in Matthew 28. “He said, ‘Go.’

“Jesus left the ultimate gated community,” Vanderpool said. “He was the star of heaven, there at creation with all the riches of heaven.

“He left that,” he said. “He became poor so we could become rich.

“How can we live any differently than that?”

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Basic human needs

A guesthouse for mission workers is almost finished, which will allow for 30-person team trips twice a month. It will be the Vanderpools' home until they can build a little cottage. Phase 1 of a 40-bed hospital will start building in July. Then they plan to expand the size of the orphanage there, which now houses 50 children. They also want to expand a new maternal health program, which now serves 200 women.

"We want to double the school and quintuple the orphanage," Vanderpool said.

The focus is on health care, clean water and food -- the most basic of human needs.

Water filtration systems -- a project backed by singer Brad Paisley and his wife, actress Kimberly-Williams Paisley -- now filter about 50,000 gallons a day. "They've shown enormous generosity," Vanderpool said of the Paisleys. "Every day, our Haitian team installs two water projects." A recent cholera outbreak farther north didn't affect Thomazeau.

Eventually, they also plan to build housing for people with special needs, a population that's all but abandoned. It will be named Johnny's House after Laurie's late brother, who had Down syndrome.

The Paisleys were ready to donate. But Vanderpool wanted more; he wanted them to come.

"You see such delight and joy in them," said Kimberly Williams-Paisley, who has worked with Laurie in the scabies and wound clinic on two trips. "She blows me away. She hugs and kisses and loves them without fear."

Family focus

The Vanderpools' young adult children -- David Stallings, John Mark and Jacklyn -- will join their parents in Haiti for Christmas. "We've made a habit of that," Laurie said. Her father, longtime Alabama and NFL football coach Gene Stallings, and her mom and sisters may join them, too.

Gene Stallings, who has been to Haiti twice, has become an advocate for his son-in-law's and daughter's work. On his own, he's raised about $450,000 for the cause.

This summer, once oldest son David ends his time in Afghanistan teaching sustainable farming, he will do the same in Haiti, focusing on a coffee farm. Jacklyn, a freshman at Texas A&M, also will join them. John Mark, a junior at Texas A&M, will be in Jordan this summer. He helped organize a Live Beyond medical team to send to West, Texas, after last week's explosion at a fertilizer factory.

"For 20 years as a family, my kids grew up with it," Vanderpool said of mission work. "It was normal for them. They didn't realize it was nuts."

Like family, longtime friends Cheryl Reed and Elisabeth Loyd were not surprised when the Vanderpools announced the move.

Laurie Stallings Vanderpool holds Chenyelo during one of her trips to Haiti. The boy's legs never developed properly.!

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At 62, Reed and her husband, Morris, 66, have new retirement plans. Reed, a nurse, has been on 16 trips with Live Beyond. Morris Reed is chairman of the Live Beyond board of directors. In a few years, they plan to live in Haiti for about half the year and half the year here downsized to a condo.

That wasn't the plan early in her life. "I thought my calling was to be a mom," she said. "It's evolved. I love how He sneaks up on me."

During her first trip in 2011, Loyd remembers never being so dirty, so hot, so tired ! and so happy.

"Not a day goes by that I don't think about the people, say a prayer," she said.

Giving away possessions

The Vanderpools are giving away possessions to friends and family and storing a few sentimental things, like Laurie's memory boxes for her children, with family. The rest, they'll figure out as they go along.

"I've told my sisters, if there's anything you've ever seen of mine that you like, take it," Laurie said.

Laurie plans to bring six pairs of khaki capris and her signature white blouses. They'll have use of a generator, so they'll bring a few things for the kitchen, such as a George Foreman grill and a hot pot for water. "It's hard to forecast, but I never want to have to buy anything again," Laurie said.

With Live Beyond board meetings, speaking engagements and their oldest child's wedding in August, the Vanderpools will come back to the United States some.

They'll keep a post office box at the Live Beyond offices, which are moving this week to rent-free office space on Belmont University's campus. Three staffers work there on communications, fundraising and mission-trip coordination.

Their hope is that all the money from selling the house and practice would fund not only their expenses, but more projects.

"We don't ever want people to fund our living," Laurie said. "That goes against everything we stand for."

Eventually, the couple may travel and live in other countries, such as Ghana, where Live Beyond also has projects.

"I'm very confident knowing that I could die doing this," Vanderpool said.

"Go big or go home."

April 23, 2013!

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Brad Paisley, Kimberly Williams-Paisley join quest to bring clean water to Haiti by Cindy Watts

A picture of eight orphaned Haitian boys living under a piece of tin hangs in Dr. David Vanderpoolʼs Brentwood office.

A river of sewage runs in front of the box they call home, Vanderpool says. They have no guardians, no clean water and only sporadic meals provided by Red Cross.

The boys are only a few of the more than 300,000 orphans in Haiti, the majority of whom are homeless.

“These little guys are on their own,” Vanderpool says, pointing at the picture.

Dr. Vanderpool is a trauma surgeon who funnels part of the money he makes from his practice into his charity, LiveBeyond. Formerly called Mobile Medical Disaster Relief, the organization works in 14 countries, performing tasks that range from burn treatment in Iraq to providing basic health care and clean water to countries in Africa and Haiti. The foundationʼs newest effort, “Live Beyond...Thirst,” aims to provide clean water to the people of Haiti, one of the worldʼs poorest countries. Haiti has no sewage system. Citizens bathe in and drink the water that flows through the streets alongside the animals.

THE TENNESSEAN A GANNETT COMPANY December 14, 2012

The “Live Beyond … Thirst” effort has received a boost from country singer Brad Paisley and his wife, actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley. Neither Vanderpool nor the Paisleys will reveal the specific donated amount. “What Brad did is huge,” Vanderpool says of the donation, tapping the table with his finger and tearing up. “Itʼs an amazing legacy. You look at that. And I know he doesnʼt have any idea of the impact.”

The Paisleys hope their donation might inspire other Middle Tennesseans to follow their lead.

“This is the time of year when people get back around to thinking about others,” Paisley says. “Itʼs what happens to me. Iʼm busy with tours and then here we are — itʼs Christmas in Nashville. Itʼs time to do some charity. We ask ourselves, ʻWho can we feed?ʼ We have the means in Nashville to fix that entire region as far as water goes and not even feel it. Nashville is a very giving place and these are good people. If (Nashville) just knew about (the dire circumstances) and could just see it, theyʼd be like, ʻWeʼre going to take this and weʼre going to make it better.ʼ ”

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Kimberly Williams-Paisley with orphans in Haiti.

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Dr. David Vanderpool explains how one of the water purifiers works Monday Nov. 19, 2012 in Brentwood, Tenn. (MARK ZALESKI / THE TENNESSEAN)!

It boils down to water Vanderpool and his wife, Laurie, have been working to help the people of Haiti since two days after the massive earthquake in 2010 that leveled much of the country and killed an estimated more than 300,000 people.

At the time, the Vanderpools set up a 1,000-bed hospital that operated with 180 doctors and 500 nurses at its peak. These days, the doctor and his wife make one good-will trip a month, and after the first of the year, Vanderpool plans to sell his practice and move there in an effort to provide more continuous care.

“I feel like little things happen that galvanize,” he says. “Itʼs an 8-year-old that weighs 20 pounds, and a lot of times itʼs little snapshots. Youʼll be walking past a contaminated stream and you see some kid drinking the water and you want to be like, ʻStop!ʼ Or you see some kid with a cleft palate that dies because thereʼs no medical care. I would rather be there than here. No question.”

Vanderpool says the bulk of Haitiʼs population lives in shanties with dirt floors and suffers from a host of potentially life-threatening ailments, including cholera, malaria, scabies and tetanus. He likens helping the country to “eating an elephant,” saying the process is “one bite at a time.”

David Vanderpool MD at the Jimanji Clinic in Haiti.

His charityʼs first significant bite is Thomazeau, where he says they “drew a line in the sand and said ʻThis is ours.ʼ ” The area has about 200,000 people, and the Vanderpools provide as much food and medical care to the area as they can through the foundation. The efforts feed residents about 6 tons of locally purchased food a week. Vanderpool says $6 feeds a family of four for a month.

“Weʼre not talking about a lot of money,” he says. “Itʼs not going to some third party. Yours truly is out there shoveling rice. We just canʼt get enough. We just need more money.”

Vanderpool describes clean water as the areaʼs largest challenge, which is changing

with the Paisleysʼ help. For $5,000-$6,000 per unit, Live Beyond can purchase and install wells with purification systems that will permanently supply residents with clean water. About 100 wells are needed to provide Thomazeau with sanitary drinking water.

“The impact on their health is not even calculable. In our clinics, at least half of the diseases we see are water-related. If you had to do one thing, water is it. Thereʼs not even a second place."

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Experience was life-changing Kimberly Williams-Paisley — who met the Vanderpools through the coupleʼs friends Olympic gold medalist Scott Hamilton and his wife, Tracie — made the trip to Haiti with the Vanderpools earlier this year.

“I didnʼt want to go and be a tourist,” Williams-Paisley says. “I wanted to go and get my hands dirty. They set up clinics and I was put right into the scabies clinic, so I got a crash course in how to diagnose heat rash, scabies, ringworm. Having these peopleʼs feet in my lap, feet that you can tell have never been cared for, I would just wash their feet or apply cream and a Band-Aid. It was such a profoundly life-changing experience, to be able to show love to someone that just couldnʼt believe that we would be there.”

Her need to go was something her husband didnʼt immediately understand. The singer was worried about his wifeʼs safety and admits that, at first, he believed Haiti wasnʼt their issue to tackle.

Brad Paisley (Photo credit: Jim Shea)

“I was like, ʻWhat?ʼ ” he recalls. “My original thought, truthfully, was … ʻCanʼt we find a problem in this state to fix?ʼ She said, ʻOf course, but I think we could really help these people. I want to go. I need this.ʼ My wife, to her credit, is the kind of person that goes and looks for ways to help this world. Everything I know about that, I learned from her. Itʼs amazing to see.”

During her Haiti trip, Williams-Paisley, a mother of two, saw mothers filling baby bottles with water tainted with sewage because they didnʼt have a choice — water that resembled cola.

“What was so incredible to me was to see the love between a mother and child that I so relate to, and then to see the circumstances that they are living in,” she says. “These parents love their children as much as I love my children. It seems like a simple thing to say, but it just hit really hard. I just didnʼt know that they donʼt have other options. They donʼt have a car. They canʼt travel but to walk. They donʼt have an education. Itʼs just a totally different situation that theyʼre in.”

She and a few girlfriends spent a week in the country working alongside the Vanderpools. She says that when it was time to go home, she was more than ready to leave but says since she returned to her comfortable Williamson

County home, the people of Thomazeau have stayed with her. Now Williams-Paisley says she canʼt wait to get back. After hearing his wife talk about her experience, Paisleyʼs view of what their “issues” are has grown to include the people of Haiti. “You can really (help your home and Haiti),” he says. “Itʼs not exclusive. If you think in terms of, ʻIʼm only going to do one charitable thing,ʼ then thatʼs a good argument. But I think that in itself is a bad argument. If anything, the 300,000 orphans in this country are worth fixing the water for. These people are our neighbors.” Paisley plans to travel in 2013 to the country thatʼs less than a two-hour flight from Miami. He plans to charter

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a plane and load it with medicine and other supplies to help the people in the Vanderpoolsʼ adopted Thomazeau. He believes the potential is there, with clean water, to “start a process that will never stop.”

“Clean water leads to healthy people, which leads to less time spent trying to survive and more time trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives,” Paisley says. “When theyʼre not worried about dysentery and theyʼre not worried about malnutrition, they can start figuring out what theyʼre dreams are. Imagine, these are people that donʼt have dreams as far as what they want to do with their lives. Their dream is to survive.” Kimberly Williams-Paisley with a scabies patient.

How to help To make a donation to Live Beyond, visit www.mmdr.org. Money can be directed to specific projects including “Live Beyond...Thirst: the Paisley Challenge.” After clicking the “Give Clean Water” prompt, a list details the cost of the water source and its components. Individuals or groups can choose to donate to cover an entire water source, one of the components or as little as $5 monthly. Naming opportunities for churches, groups or individuals are available, as is the chance to travel to Haiti to see the water source being installed. In addition to clean water, people also can choose to donate money for food, to support Live Beyond missionaries or to the Live Beyond Base and hospital that the Vanderpools are building in Haiti.

Information also is available on the site on how to volunteer with the Vanderpools in Haiti, as well as internship opportunities for Live Beyond.

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December 14, 2012 Cindy Watts

THE TENNESSEAN A GANNETT COMPANY

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EVERYDAY HEROES Mobley / Fried

Published 2012 by Welcome Books

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Dr David Vanderpool (far right) and his two sons, David Stallings and John Mark, administering to an injured woman and her sons in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

!"was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. I grew up very privileged, went

to the best schools, and ended up becoming a vascular surgeon just

like my father. Because of my upbringing, I didn’t really come into

contact with people who were disadvantaged until I was older. When

I realized how many people out there are in dire straits and living on

the edge, I felt I needed to use the gifts and the talents I’d been given for

their benefit.

So my wife, Laurie, and I started doing volunteer medical work about

twenty years ago, providing free health care in Third World countries that

had suffered either a natural or man-made disaster. We continued to build

that effort throughout our adult lives, and in 2003, we formally founded

Mobile Medical Disaster Relief.

A lot of the medical services we provide are very simple, but it’s the

Dr. David Vanderpool has spent a lifetime donating medical assistance

and infrastructure to communities in developing nations. His

nonprofit, Mobile Medical Disaster Relief (MMDR), serves fourteen

Third World countries. He and his wife, Laurie, travel overseas every

month for a week or two at a time, taking along twenty to forty

trained volunteers, to deliver aid to those in need. Last year alone

they provided free health care to more than 10,000 patients, as well

as many other support services. This year they’ll break ground on a

twenty-three-acre permanent campus in Haiti, which will house a

fully operational hospital, an orphanage, a school, a demonstration

farm, and handicapped housing.

“We have a motto around our place that we’re not responsible for saving the world, we’re just responsible for loving the person in front of us.”

Dr. David VanderpoolFounder and CEO, Mobile Medical Disaster Relief (MMDR)

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194 195Everyday Heroes

simple things that will kill you in the Third World. Something like appendicitis

is an inconvenience here in America, and it’s lethal over there. We’ll go in

and provide primary care to the local people. They may have diabetes; they

may have high blood pressure. Most of them have infections, like malaria—

that’s the number one killer in developing countries. I’ll perform surgical

procedures in some of these areas as well.

We’ve branched out now beyond the medical care. It’s still the

backbone of our organization, but we also work to supply clean drinking

water and provide microfinancing to small businesses. We want to add

sustainable agriculture to our model as well. In fact, my oldest son is

getting his master’s in that subject at Texas A and M. When he graduates,

he wants to join us and implement a sustainable agriculture program in

the countries that we’re working in. If you can go into an area and provide

those four basic things—clean water, a food supply, adequate medical

care, and business growth—that community can thrive.

We intentionally go to the worst places we can find, the places

that need us the most. For instance, we work in Central Ghana, child slave

trafficking is a big issue and we’ve found that we can use our health and clean

water initiatives to leverage the children out of slavery. So we’re not just a

disaster organization that goes in, spends a few weeks, and then leaves. We

stay. And we try to build infrastructure. We develop relationships with the

people. And, they not only come to trust us, but they become our friends.

We work in Haiti quite a bit. We’re about to make our twenty-third

trip. The first time we were there, just two days after the earthquake, we

helped set up a large hospital on the Dominican border, where I had to

perform a number of amputations. I was the first doctor on the scene.

We had a couple of nurses and a thousand patients, so it was just an

overwhelming situation.

Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to get adequate pain medicines into

a country right after a disaster, because most are narcotics, and because

the narcotic drug trade is a huge issue in many of these countries, the

laws are very restrictive. Therefore, a lot of the surgical cases we have are

insufficiently treated for pain. It’s an unbelievably difficult situation, as a

doctor, when you have to perform a procedure like an amputation without

pain management, especially when the patient is a child.

Sadly, we had a lot of children injured in the Haitian earthquake.

The quake hit just a little bit before 5:00 P.M. and it was naptime; so, many

of the children were at home. Anyone inside a structure was very likely

injured, because the walls collapsed.

The first amputee patient that I saw was an eight-year-old girl. Her leg

was just absolutely pulverized. Her parents were both there, and of course,

they didn’t want her to lose her leg. We just had no choice whatsoever,

she was dying in front of us. Through some long discussions, they finally

consented to the operation. So we went ahead, and the little girl did fine.

We fitted her with a prosthetic limb, and her parents were extremely

grateful. I sort of lost track of her over the ensuing months, until about a

year later, when we were back in Haiti on another relief mission. We were

going into a little church that we attended there, and on the front steps

were the little girl and her dad, waiting for us. They had heard that we were

going to be at the church, and had really sacrificed—traveled hours—to see

us and thank us. That was just an amazingly touching moment for me.

“A lot of the medical services we provide are very simple, but it’s the simple things that will kill you in the Third World.”

A big part of our work is trying to get Westerners to see that there

are people whose lives we can save with very little money and very little

effort. I think if more people realized that, we would change the world. In

the places we go to, the people are living on maybe a dollar a day, and we

spend more than that here for a small latté. We live in a country that’s very

materialistic, but you go to Mozambique or Ghana or Haiti, and the people

are very spiritual. They don’t care how you look or how you drive or how

many letters you have after your name. I have a hard time with reverse

culture shock whenever I come back home. I’ll pull up to a stop sign and

there will be three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of vehicles lined up

in front of me, and I’ll think, “I could build two hospitals with 300K, that

would serve hundreds of thousands of people who don’t have medical

care.” And I’ll just think, “My goodness, can’t you drive a ten-year-old car

and save the lives of some people who are dying because they can’t get a

vaccine or clean water?”

My kids have been traveling with us since they were little, so they

don’t see it as unusual; they think it’s fairly normal, which I think is hilarious.

Our little girl, she’s our baby and she’s a senior in high school now, I think

her first trip to Africa was when she was ten. So she’s grown up playing

with tribal African children and she just loves it. It’s interesting, they’re

very different from other kids because of these experiences. They’re not

materialistic, all of them are focused on getting degrees and educations

that will help them help people in the developing world. It’s fun for an

old dad to see his kids further his vision. I hope they continue it. It’s so

fulfilling to be a small part of helping people who are at the other end of

the socioeconomic scale.

People ask me all the time, especially in relationship to Haiti, with all

the problems over there, “Why do you it? I mean, it’s hopeless.” Well, it’s

only hopeless if you don’t go. We have a motto around our place that we’re

not responsible for saving the world, we’re just responsible for loving the

person in front of us. And when you look at it that way, it’s so easy to solve

these huge problems. You wake up one day and you realize, “You know,

we’ve made a little impact on our corner of the world.”

One of the experiences that just rocked me was in Northern

Mozambique, where the people are excruciatingly poor, in absolutely

heartbreaking situations. The average life span of a woman is thirty-four

years, and 60 percent of kids die before age five. I was treating a woman

who had been badly beaten. The men over there are very aggressive

toward women, and the women are impoverished and destitute. It was

just breaking my heart. I was sewing up this woman’s face and she spoke a

tribal language that I didn’t speak, so we could only communicate by smiles

and gestures. And it just hit me hard that I could be in her situation. She

could have what I have—the great education, the degrees, the fantastic

upbringing, and I could have been born in Mozambique. Bono (social

activist and lead singer of the Irish rock band U2) calls it the “accident of

latitude.” I don’t think it’s an accident, but it’s just mind-boggling to me that

the roles could be reversed just as easily as not. I would certainly want

people to come over and try to give me a leg up if I were in that situation.

Hurricane Katrina was one of the first large-scale disasters we

participated in, and it allowed us to see how we could be really effective

in doing mobile clinics. We went down probably fifteen times, with a

pickup truck loaded with medications, and worked with the Red Cross. The

hospitals were completely shut down because they had no electricity. The

residents had tremendous medical problems and there was no one to take

care of them. It absolutely blew my mind that I was in the United States.

You expect things like this in Africa … but here? It was heartbreaking. They

didn’t have cars, they didn’t have money, they didn’t have shoes. The rich

people had all gotten out; it was the poor who were left behind. We went

through the truckful of medicines in a heartbeat.

My oldest was probably about sixteen at the time. Right before we

left for New Orleans the first time, he asked to go with us. I said no; I knew

there would be a lot of body recovery and I didn’t want him to see that at

that age. And then the night before we were making another trip down

there, he said, “You know, Dad, here you’re spending all this money and

time and taking off work to go help these people—why didn’t they just get

out, why didn’t they just get in their cars and leave? They knew that the

hurricane was coming.” So I said, “Pack your stuff, buddy, you’re coming

with us.” Our first stop was in Biloxi and there was a fella who had been

bitten by an alligator and lost a good portion of his leg. We actually had

to operate on him in the back of our truck, and we got him fixed up. We

put him back in his house and we’d visit him twice a day and change his

dressing. But as we were initially taking care of this guy that first day, my

son, who had questioned why we needed to even go before, said, “Dad,

this is terrible, people need to come down and help these poor folks.” He

had made a 180-degree change in just a few minutes, and it was gratifying

because I knew he got it, he got the vision.

I truly believe every person—whether you live in Africa or Texas—is

equally valuable; and that we’re put on this earth to help people who are

not able to help themselves. We live very simply, Laurie and I, so that we

can do this work, and we love doing it. I feel I have the best job in the world

right now.

Dr. David Vanderpool, MD

Page 14: Mediabooklet 091713 lr

194 195Everyday Heroes

simple things that will kill you in the Third World. Something like appendicitis

is an inconvenience here in America, and it’s lethal over there. We’ll go in

and provide primary care to the local people. They may have diabetes; they

may have high blood pressure. Most of them have infections, like malaria—

that’s the number one killer in developing countries. I’ll perform surgical

procedures in some of these areas as well.

We’ve branched out now beyond the medical care. It’s still the

backbone of our organization, but we also work to supply clean drinking

water and provide microfinancing to small businesses. We want to add

sustainable agriculture to our model as well. In fact, my oldest son is

getting his master’s in that subject at Texas A and M. When he graduates,

he wants to join us and implement a sustainable agriculture program in

the countries that we’re working in. If you can go into an area and provide

those four basic things—clean water, a food supply, adequate medical

care, and business growth—that community can thrive.

We intentionally go to the worst places we can find, the places

that need us the most. For instance, we work in Central Ghana, child slave

trafficking is a big issue and we’ve found that we can use our health and clean

water initiatives to leverage the children out of slavery. So we’re not just a

disaster organization that goes in, spends a few weeks, and then leaves. We

stay. And we try to build infrastructure. We develop relationships with the

people. And, they not only come to trust us, but they become our friends.

We work in Haiti quite a bit. We’re about to make our twenty-third

trip. The first time we were there, just two days after the earthquake, we

helped set up a large hospital on the Dominican border, where I had to

perform a number of amputations. I was the first doctor on the scene.

We had a couple of nurses and a thousand patients, so it was just an

overwhelming situation.

Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to get adequate pain medicines into

a country right after a disaster, because most are narcotics, and because

the narcotic drug trade is a huge issue in many of these countries, the

laws are very restrictive. Therefore, a lot of the surgical cases we have are

insufficiently treated for pain. It’s an unbelievably difficult situation, as a

doctor, when you have to perform a procedure like an amputation without

pain management, especially when the patient is a child.

Sadly, we had a lot of children injured in the Haitian earthquake.

The quake hit just a little bit before 5:00 P.M. and it was naptime; so, many

of the children were at home. Anyone inside a structure was very likely

injured, because the walls collapsed.

The first amputee patient that I saw was an eight-year-old girl. Her leg

was just absolutely pulverized. Her parents were both there, and of course,

they didn’t want her to lose her leg. We just had no choice whatsoever,

she was dying in front of us. Through some long discussions, they finally

consented to the operation. So we went ahead, and the little girl did fine.

We fitted her with a prosthetic limb, and her parents were extremely

grateful. I sort of lost track of her over the ensuing months, until about a

year later, when we were back in Haiti on another relief mission. We were

going into a little church that we attended there, and on the front steps

were the little girl and her dad, waiting for us. They had heard that we were

going to be at the church, and had really sacrificed—traveled hours—to see

us and thank us. That was just an amazingly touching moment for me.

“A lot of the medical services we provide are very simple, but it’s the simple things that will kill you in the Third World.”

A big part of our work is trying to get Westerners to see that there

are people whose lives we can save with very little money and very little

effort. I think if more people realized that, we would change the world. In

the places we go to, the people are living on maybe a dollar a day, and we

spend more than that here for a small latté. We live in a country that’s very

materialistic, but you go to Mozambique or Ghana or Haiti, and the people

are very spiritual. They don’t care how you look or how you drive or how

many letters you have after your name. I have a hard time with reverse

culture shock whenever I come back home. I’ll pull up to a stop sign and

there will be three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of vehicles lined up

in front of me, and I’ll think, “I could build two hospitals with 300K, that

would serve hundreds of thousands of people who don’t have medical

care.” And I’ll just think, “My goodness, can’t you drive a ten-year-old car

and save the lives of some people who are dying because they can’t get a

vaccine or clean water?”

My kids have been traveling with us since they were little, so they

don’t see it as unusual; they think it’s fairly normal, which I think is hilarious.

Our little girl, she’s our baby and she’s a senior in high school now, I think

her first trip to Africa was when she was ten. So she’s grown up playing

with tribal African children and she just loves it. It’s interesting, they’re

very different from other kids because of these experiences. They’re not

materialistic, all of them are focused on getting degrees and educations

that will help them help people in the developing world. It’s fun for an

old dad to see his kids further his vision. I hope they continue it. It’s so

fulfilling to be a small part of helping people who are at the other end of

the socioeconomic scale.

People ask me all the time, especially in relationship to Haiti, with all

the problems over there, “Why do you it? I mean, it’s hopeless.” Well, it’s

only hopeless if you don’t go. We have a motto around our place that we’re

not responsible for saving the world, we’re just responsible for loving the

person in front of us. And when you look at it that way, it’s so easy to solve

these huge problems. You wake up one day and you realize, “You know,

we’ve made a little impact on our corner of the world.”

One of the experiences that just rocked me was in Northern

Mozambique, where the people are excruciatingly poor, in absolutely

heartbreaking situations. The average life span of a woman is thirty-four

years, and 60 percent of kids die before age five. I was treating a woman

who had been badly beaten. The men over there are very aggressive

toward women, and the women are impoverished and destitute. It was

just breaking my heart. I was sewing up this woman’s face and she spoke a

tribal language that I didn’t speak, so we could only communicate by smiles

and gestures. And it just hit me hard that I could be in her situation. She

could have what I have—the great education, the degrees, the fantastic

upbringing, and I could have been born in Mozambique. Bono (social

activist and lead singer of the Irish rock band U2) calls it the “accident of

latitude.” I don’t think it’s an accident, but it’s just mind-boggling to me that

the roles could be reversed just as easily as not. I would certainly want

people to come over and try to give me a leg up if I were in that situation.

Hurricane Katrina was one of the first large-scale disasters we

participated in, and it allowed us to see how we could be really effective

in doing mobile clinics. We went down probably fifteen times, with a

pickup truck loaded with medications, and worked with the Red Cross. The

hospitals were completely shut down because they had no electricity. The

residents had tremendous medical problems and there was no one to take

care of them. It absolutely blew my mind that I was in the United States.

You expect things like this in Africa … but here? It was heartbreaking. They

didn’t have cars, they didn’t have money, they didn’t have shoes. The rich

people had all gotten out; it was the poor who were left behind. We went

through the truckful of medicines in a heartbeat.

My oldest was probably about sixteen at the time. Right before we

left for New Orleans the first time, he asked to go with us. I said no; I knew

there would be a lot of body recovery and I didn’t want him to see that at

that age. And then the night before we were making another trip down

there, he said, “You know, Dad, here you’re spending all this money and

time and taking off work to go help these people—why didn’t they just get

out, why didn’t they just get in their cars and leave? They knew that the

hurricane was coming.” So I said, “Pack your stuff, buddy, you’re coming

with us.” Our first stop was in Biloxi and there was a fella who had been

bitten by an alligator and lost a good portion of his leg. We actually had

to operate on him in the back of our truck, and we got him fixed up. We

put him back in his house and we’d visit him twice a day and change his

dressing. But as we were initially taking care of this guy that first day, my

son, who had questioned why we needed to even go before, said, “Dad,

this is terrible, people need to come down and help these poor folks.” He

had made a 180-degree change in just a few minutes, and it was gratifying

because I knew he got it, he got the vision.

I truly believe every person—whether you live in Africa or Texas—is

equally valuable; and that we’re put on this earth to help people who are

not able to help themselves. We live very simply, Laurie and I, so that we

can do this work, and we love doing it. I feel I have the best job in the world

right now.

Dr. David Vanderpool, MD

Page 15: Mediabooklet 091713 lr

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Page 17: Mediabooklet 091713 lr

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2010 HEROES AMONG US AWARDS