CONGRATULATIONS TO FRANK NICE FOR RECEIVING THE PRESIDENT’S CALL TO SERVICE LIFETIME AWARD FOR FOUNDING OUR MEDICAL MISSION!

Click here for an article on his work in the NIH periodical.

Below is the text read at the award ceremony.

Twelve years ago, Dr. Frank J. Nice, Federal Pharmacist, made his first trip to Haiti to evaluate the health and medical needs of the Leon region of Haiti. Approximately 50,000 Haitians live in this mountain, jungle area. Most of these Haitian people had never seen a doctor or pharmacist in their lifetime. Because of death due to curable diseases and birth deformities, the Haitian life span is just over 50 years. Many children do not live beyond five years of age.

Dr. Nice returned the next year with two doctors and a nurse that he recruited as volunteers to run a one week clinic. The medical team treated over a 1,000 patients and filled over 5,000 prescriptions. The next year he led two medical teams that saw twice as many patients as the year before. The following year, a dental team was added to three medical teams.

Dr. Nice just returned from his tenth medical mission to Haiti during October 2007. In addition, he has organized over two dozen missions to Haiti. Currently, two or more teams now go to Haiti three times a year during February, June, and October of each year. Approximately 10,000 patients are seen and treated each year with over 40,000 prescriptions filled for infections, worms, scabies, malnutrition, birth defects, filariasis, malaria, cancer, malignancies, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, pain, hypertension, gastric upset, epilepsy, diabetes, life threatening pregnancies, traumatic injuries, physical and medical deformities such as goiter, club feet, enlarged hearts, hernias, and hydrocephaloceles, among others. Those patients that can not be treated adequately by the medical mission teams are given funds and referred to other facilities in Haiti and occasionally to the United States for further treatment.

Dr. Nice, as well as other volunteers, donate all time and personal expenses to carry out the missions. Thus, there is no administrative overhead for any of the missions. All funds collected by donations go directly for purchasing drugs and pharmaceutical supplies and for treating patients. Dr. Nice has made all the necessary arrangements to procure drugs and supplies at the lowest cost. Each mission team can personally take up to one ton of supplies as check in baggage while living on what can be carried on the plane.

As part of his missions to Haiti, Dr. Nice has personally purchased land and built a school for orphan and destitute children in Leon, Haiti. He has supported a Haitian nurse in getting her degree in nursing. Volunteers have helped build another school where children are educated and fed. The medical clinic has been restored from a ramshackle, leaking facility to a clinic that patients can now be seen with dignity and respect. Running water from mountain springs have replaced the dirty, infected river water the Haitian people of Leon had to use for drinking and washing. Patients are now treated regularly for worms to prevent re-infection. Vaccination and tuberculosis treatment programs have been established.

There are few others in this world who are more limited by their physical limitations as a result of birth and accidents than the Haitian people. There a few others in this world that have so little educational opportunities than the citizens of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti. Not only has Dr. Nice and his volunteers truly made a difference in the lives of the sick and disabled in the present, but he has given them hope for a better future. It is a future of promise where curable diseases will be treated and where people will not live a whole life and then die with physical malformations present from birth or the result of a traumatic accident.

Dr. Nice has spent an average of 240 hours per year over the past 12 years on the ground in Haiti providing primary medical and pharmaceutical care under austere conditions. In addition, he spends on the average another 240 hours each year in the United States organizing, setting up, and completing medical missions to Haiti by procuring necessary medical supplies, recruiting volunteers, obtaining necessary funding, and providing leadership.