Local Volunteer Heads to Haiti
By:
Updated: November 20, 2012
A Little Rock man is embarking on a life-saving mission to one of the poorest parts of the world. It's all part of an effort to provide free heart surgery for children.
Roy Morris' photo album tells the story of countless children who have received free life-saving heart surgery in Equador, Malaysia, Iraq- literally all around the world.
"Before this, the children had nowhere to go," said Morris.
"They basically went home to die."
Morris works as a biomedical engineer at Little Rock-based Biomedical Solutions, but he spends his free time as a volunteer for International Children's Heart Foundation, which is based in Memphis.
Morris said, "I have seen babies as blue as blue can be turn pink right on the operating table."
One of 800 volunteers, Morris' role is to secure the medical equipment needed to make these surgeries possible at low cost to the charity.
"Like Children's Hospital here in Little Rock," said Morris. "I have equipment of theirs all over the world that they would have thrown out and never used again."
His mission now is to take over a million dollars in donated equipment down to a hospital in Jimani, which is on the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
With Morris' help, it will soon have two fully functional pediatric cardiac operating rooms. Local staff there will be trained so that even more children can be helped.
Morris started volunteering with the International Children's Heart Foundation in 2007. Once he saw what difference the surgeries make in children's lives, he knew he was hooked.
"When you are there and you help out and you give them that chance and you see them grow and get better... it's just amazing."
Morris will be in Haiti through mid-December getting the operating rooms ready.
The first surgeries there should take place sometime in February.
To learn more, visit http://www.babyheart.org/
Roy Morris' photo album tells the story of countless children who have received free life-saving heart surgery in Equador, Malaysia, Iraq- literally all around the world.
"Before this, the children had nowhere to go," said Morris.
"They basically went home to die."
Morris works as a biomedical engineer at Little Rock-based Biomedical Solutions, but he spends his free time as a volunteer for International Children's Heart Foundation, which is based in Memphis.
Morris said, "I have seen babies as blue as blue can be turn pink right on the operating table."
One of 800 volunteers, Morris' role is to secure the medical equipment needed to make these surgeries possible at low cost to the charity.
"Like Children's Hospital here in Little Rock," said Morris. "I have equipment of theirs all over the world that they would have thrown out and never used again."
His mission now is to take over a million dollars in donated equipment down to a hospital in Jimani, which is on the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
With Morris' help, it will soon have two fully functional pediatric cardiac operating rooms. Local staff there will be trained so that even more children can be helped.
Morris started volunteering with the International Children's Heart Foundation in 2007. Once he saw what difference the surgeries make in children's lives, he knew he was hooked.
"When you are there and you help out and you give them that chance and you see them grow and get better... it's just amazing."
Morris will be in Haiti through mid-December getting the operating rooms ready.
The first surgeries there should take place sometime in February.
To learn more, visit http://www.babyheart.org/
