Sense
Island Relief! Dr. Warren Volker Leads a Las Vegas Medical Mission to Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria
By Paul Harasim
P
uerto Rico – a tropical Caribbean island with white sandy beaches, mountains, a rainforest, and a charming residential and commercial district that has evolved out of a 500-year-old neighborhood in the capital city of San Juan. If that description of the U.S. Territory 1000 miles from Miami sounds like a tourist’s vacation paradise, it is : Until 2017, nearly 4 million people visited the island annually, supplying approximately $1.8 billion each year to the Puerto Rican economy. ears ago, Dr. Warren Volker, the chief clinical officer of Davita edical
Group-Healthcare Partners of Nevada, as well as a clinical professor of minimally invasive surgery at the UNLV School of Medicine, had heard all about the beauty of the island from friends, colleagues, and students. He hoped to vacation there one day. But when Volker did go to the island, it wasn’t on vacation. It was on a medical mission that he organized in the wake of Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico in late September 2017. The Category 4 storm made landfall with winds close to 150 miles an hour and plowed a path of destruction across the island, killing nearly 3000 people and causing property damage estimated at $90 billion. Much of the island was without electricity for months.
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2/25/2019 12:19:45 PM