Dr. Dan Doyle’s Humanitarian Effort to Haiti Continues

www.midhudsonnews.com • Feb 22, 2019
Dr. Doyle visits Haiti in January 2019


CARMEL – Dr. Dan Doyle has returned from the most gratifying experience in his more than 40 years of practicing dentistry in Putnam County.

The Kent resident spent a week in Haiti–the poorest country in the western hemisphere which also has the dubious distinction of being the least developed and the least stable where risks and danger loom at every corner.

Doyle’s trip to a land where people depend on subsistence farming, charcoal production and other menial jobs for their livelihood and earn anywhere from $90 to $300 American annually, was his seventh dating back to 2013.

During his recent adventure along with fellow dentist Dr. Paul Callahan of Garden City, Long Island, the Putnam physician treated 250-plus men, women and children in need of dental care.

Volunteers including Doyle, participating in the efforts of the Haitian Health Foundation, a not-for-profit founded 35 years ago by Connecticut dentist Dr. Jerry Lowney, pay for their own travel plus room and board.

Lowney worked in orphanages in the Central American country and corresponded with Mother Theresa, who asked that he visit Jeremie, an extremely poor region in the western end of Haiti consisting of 250,000 residents.

Doyle first visited Haiti with his cousin Dr. Phil Doyle, who grew up in Purdys and recently retired from his practice in Connecticut.

Doyle was so moved by the experience that he has returned annually to partake in the week-long journey that was described as an “epiphany.”

After navigating from the airport to the tiny village 140 miles away in a caravan that took more than 10 hours to complete on non-existent narrow, pot holed filled dirt roads, Doyle extracted 60 teeth a day from villagers who had not been treated by a dentist in years. “They were predominantly healthy and nourished people but their teeth were rotted due to constant chewing on sugar cane,” he said.

Dr. Doyle, who also serves on the Putnam County Board of Health, said his recurring trips have been as rewarding as the first journey. “The excursions get even better because I am now better prepared emotionally. Poverty is so overwhelming in Haiti. I recall having emotional problems which I called ‘reverse culture shock’ when I returned to the U.S. following that first trip.”

Doyle described the “opulence found in Putnam as compared to the villages in Haiti as day and night. We have so much to be thankful for while people in Haiti have virtually nothing. New Yorkers take so much for granted.”

Doyle performed extractions in mountain villages. Patients, primarily farmers, residing in shacks, were appreciative because even though he inflicted pain, patients were receiving much needed dental care.

The most recent trip posed danger to the popular Putnam dentist and his entourage due to the civil unrest currently found in Haiti: “We were advised to cut our humanitarian effort short by one day. Armed security protected our sleeping quarters each night.”

Extractions were performed under a large three-sided tent or inside a chapel located on the Haitian Health Foundation property with local anesthesia. “Due to the danger around us, local officials did not deem it safe for us to venture out. Instead patients were brought to us for treatment where we extracted teeth in a church with a cross behind us,” said Doyle who performed the procedures without suction and with rudimentary sterilization and instruments.

Dental chairs and tables were fabricated from folding chairs and tables often found at a Putnam County picnic.

Doyle had praise for the Putnam County Dental Society for its donation that was earmarked for the purchase of modern dental equipment for the impoverished land.

The Lake Carmel dentist plans to return to Haiti again this fall and continue his work and the goals of the health foundation.

Dr. Doyle realizes that his efforts may not change the world but he also understands that he and the other volunteers are changing lives–one person at a time.


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