It was late morning on January 15 when Kavita Vinekar, 22, answered the phone — yet again — in her Plainsboro home and assured the caller that she was safe. She wasn’t in Haiti when the earthquake hit.
About 30 minutes later, the scenario played itself out again. “No, I’m safe. But, thanks for calling and asking,” she said.
Vinekar, a 2005 High School South graduate, missed the earthquake, but the news of the disaster hit close to home — in fact, it occurred in a country she has called home since June, when she left the United States to pursue an interest in global health. And despite news of the disaster and the panic and fear it has created, Vinekar returned to Haiti on January 18.
While many people have been compelled to help with earthquake recovery efforts, Vinekar will be resuming work as a medical missionary combating the pre-existing problems that plagued the country: diseases, political unrest, and lack of clean water and medical care.
“I can’t even fathom this,” she said of the earthquake. “I was shocked and angry that this could happen to a country that has already been through so much.”
Vinekar’s interest in global health and development materialized while she was attending the University of Pennsylvania. During her senior year, the biology major discovered Medical Missionaries.
Based in Virginia, Medical Missionaries is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit volunteer group of more than 200 doctors, nurses, dentists, and others who work to improve the health of the poor in the U.S. and throughout the world. It provides medical care and medical supplies, clothing, and food to the areas it serves.
In Thomassique, Haiti, the organization built and supported a clinic, the first medical facility in that region. Its volunteers also work with the residents of the region to provide potable water and overcome childhood malnutrition.
Vinekar learned that every year, the organization sends two recent college graduates in the pre-med field to work at the clinic. Vinekar applied in the fall of 2008 and went through a rigorous application and interview process. In December, 2008, she found out she had been selected, and by June, 2009, she was on her way to Haiti, where she has spent her time since.
She fit Medical Missionaries’ criteria — academic excellence, leadership experience, passion and enthusiasm for the opportunity, and previous experience in an underserved country. Aside from her visits to India, Vinekar had traveled to Botswana as a sophomore in college as part of a two-month research project in an HIV lab there. As part of her work, she trained microbiologists to isolate plasma and red blood cells from white blood cells and freeze cells and send them back to Penn for research.
“That got me excited in working with infectious diseases,” she said. “Working internationally is something I want to do in my career — working in partnerships with communities in a more collaborative approach to finding solutions.”
“Rather than going in as saving them, go in instead as someone who is willing to work with the community to find solutions,” said Vinekar, who will remain in Haiti until the end of June.
While there, she has a slew of responsibilities, including dealing with staffing issues, the clinic’s finances, facilitating medical supply shipments, tracking consumption of medicine and supplies, and serving as a liaison between the nonprofit organization and the Haitian people at the clinic, which was not damaged in the earthquake.
Vinekar is also working on a malnutrition project, school lunch and HIV programs, and initiatives for clean water and iodizing salt. “It’s very unusual to find this opportunity for recent graduates,” she said. “There is a unique level of autonomy we have. We have a lot of say in what direction the programs are taken.”
“There was really no question that this was going to be an experience I can benefit from and contribute to,” she said. The tough part was convincing her family she would be happy and safe.
Her parents — her mother is a psychiatrist with an office in the Princeton Meadows shopping center and her father is an electrical engineer who works for Sirius satellite radio as a senior research scientist — have been supportive of her decision to take a less traditional route.
They were born and raised in India and return to visit the country often with their two daughter. While neither of them has worked in underserved countries, they understand their daughter’s calling.
Vinekar was born in Long Island and moved to the Princeton Collection development in Plainsboro in 1990. During her visits to India with her family she developed “a long-time complex about the privilege I had here and the poverty and destitution that existed in so many children in India.” Rather than doing nothing about it, she “channeled the initial feelings of guilt and anger” into a love of helping others.
“Ultimately my parents have been extremely supportive,” she said. “Not every parent will allow their kid to go abroad, and they were understandably concerned about my safety and my health.”
In a district where parents encourage their children to rise through the ranks as quickly as possible, it was a big decision for Vinekar to veer from the traditional path to take time off after college before attending medical school. But Vinekar said it was the best decision she ever made and one that will ultimately make her a better physician.
“It’s not about being a doctor and having those letters after your name — it’s about being part of a global community,” she said.
Vinekar plans to begin medical school –– she has just finished applications to various schools –– in August, two months after her mission in Haiti is completed. She came home to Plainsboro in December for the holidays and to work on medical school applications, and was originally scheduled to return to Haiti the day after the earthquake hit. Because of her family’s concern for her well being, the date was postponed until January 18.
“I wouldn’t say I’m worried about my own safety,” she said. “My biggest concern is what this is putting my family through emotionally. But this is really important. I have to go back.”
Because Thomassique is located northeast of capital city Port-Au-Prince, on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the rural countryside, it was not impacted by the earthquake, though it felt the aftershocks. Vinekar said, though, that she thinks her area will feel the consequences of the devastation.
The tragedy already reached close to home for Vinekar. She found out about the earthquake from her aunt, who was watching CNN when the earthquake struck. Vinekar began worrying about Thomassique and the people with whom she has formed close relationships. At first, she was unable to reach anyone at the clinic, and she grew concerned. “It’s not knowing whether your friends are dead or alive.”
She finally reached her co-workers and found that Thomassique was safe. But one of the native doctors at the clinic, who was originally from Port-Au-Prince, came to the clinic for work, leaving his wife and newborn baby in the capital. He has not been able to reach his wife and had to travel back to the capital to try to find his family amid the devastation.
Despite having to assess how the earthquake will impact her work upon return, Vinekar remains committed to her original goals. “I want to make sure we don’t overlook the persistent problems as well,” she said. “Tragedy doesn’t make those problems go away; I think it exacerbates them.”
But those tragedies have evoked one positive reminder for Vinekar — the sense of community and the level of concern her family, friends, and neighbors have shown for not only her well being, but for the country in their willingness to donate to the cause. It is the same community that encouraged her to find this path initially. “I don’t think my interests would have evolved and developed this way without the education system here,” she said. “It allowed me to develop not only intellectually, but as a person, as a resident.”
And while her time in Haiti will be ending in June, it isn’t goodbye, especially since she plans to continue working globally. “I can say with a great deal of confidence that I’ll be back in Haiti. I can do so much more if I strengthen my skills in clinical work.”
Vinekar encourages donations to causes supporting Haiti. To donate to Medical Missionaries, log onto www.medmissionaries.org. Other organizations include Health/Zanmi Lasante (www.pih.-org/home.html); Hope for Haiti (www.hopeforhaiti.com/); Fonkoze (www.fonkoze.org/); and Doctors Without Borders/MSF (doctorswithoutborders.org/).
For a list of organizations in Haiti, visit https://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/haiti-disaster-relief-how-to-contribute/. More information is also available at whitehouse.gov.
