Braun: In easing Haiti's suffering, N.J. doctor finds meaning of joy Published: Thursday, June 02, 2011, 12:00 PM
By
Bob Braun/Star-Ledger Columnist
Megan Coffee does not offer to explain why she does what she does, except to state the obvious: It makes her happy. It makes her happy to use the knowledge and skills earned from, among other experiences, her medical education at Harvard and her PhD from Oxford, to treat, for no pay, some of the sickest people on earth in one of the poorest places on earth, Haiti. "I heal very sick people," she says. "I can see them get better because of the things I’ve done.’’ She estimates she has treated more than 1,000 AIDS and tuberculosis patients.
Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-Ledger Megan Coffee checks the vitals of a patient while making rounds in the tuberculosis ward of the hospital in Port au Prince, Haiti. She is the only doctor in the ward and is responsible for 50 patients. Now, local students are following in her footsteps, raising money for poverty stricken Haitians still feeling the effects from the 2010 earthquake.
It may be a measure not so much of Coffee but of others that this should be remarkable. Who wouldn’t be happy curing very sick people? But Megan has the credentials, the skills, the experience, to, say, be a faculty member at a medical school while running a lucrative medical practice. She could be rich and comfortable. "She has no material interests,’’ says her mother Jane, who speaks of her only child with wonder and frustration. She is pleased Megan is the woman she is but also would be pleased, maybe more so, if her daughter could be home more often or live in a less perilous place. "I know she is much happier there than she was in California.’’ Megan was working on a fellowship in San Francisco on Jan. 12, 2010, when an earthquake destroyed much of Haiti and killed 200,000 people. Within days, the young physician and expert on AIDS and other communicable diseases—and a former Star-Ledger Scholar — flew to Haiti and became the non-paid head of
Page 18 of 170