Local doctor assists Sandy victims
Photo courtesy of The Aroostook Medical Center
DR. DAVID HORNE, a dermatologist at TAMC, recounts stories from his experience with the Doctors Without Borders mission he participated in recently after Superstorm Sandy. Listening to Dr. Horne are, from left: Cam Hayward, manager of TAMC’s outpatient clinic; Karen Putnam, medical assistant; and Emily Lowell, medical assistant.
TAMC DERMATOLOGIST Dr. David Horne takes a moment for a photo with other providers participating in the first-ever domestic mission for Doctors Without Borders in New York City. 
The photo was taken in the laundry room of a low-income apartment high-rise, where the organization set up a makeshift clinic in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.
PRESQUE ISLE — Dr. David Horne, MD, a dermatologist at The Aroostook Medical Center in Presque Isle, had never before participated in a relief effort with Doctors Without Borders — that was until Superstorm Sandy hit.
Not only was it a first for Dr. Horne, but the mission was the firstever on U.S. soil for the organization best known for providing humanitarian medical assistance in impoverished and devastated countries around the globe. Although it is unknown whether Doctors Without Borders will be mobilized domestically again, one thing is for certain … Dr. Horne will serve again.
“I’ll definitely work with them again,” he said. “It was hard work. It was cold and there was no power, but it was an honor to go into people’s homes and check in on them to make sure they were OK, to take their vital signs, and determine if they needed further medical treatment. It was interesting and rewarding.”
Dr. Horne learned of the recent mission through two friends who are directors at the field office for Doctors Without Borders in New York. They had put out a call to everyone they knew with only three requirements to participate — the physician had to have a license to practice medicine in New York, a prescription pad, and the willingness to serve.
Possessing all three, Dr. Horne signed up and worked four days in the Rockaways, a part of Queens that faces the Atlantic Ocean. He spent two days working in the laundry room of one of the high-rise, low-income apartment buildings the team had converted into a makeshift clinic. The other two days he served as a mobile M.D. going up and down countless flights of stairs in the buildings to check in on residents who were in need of medical attention.
“I spent a lot of time checking to ensure the residents weren’t in need of more urgent medical care and needed to be transported to a medical facility. I also ended up calling in needed prescriptions to be filled at the pharmacy. Many of the pharmacies nearby were actually destroyed or had not re-opened. The area was without electricity and the living conditions in the buildings — without services such as electricity, water, heat and sewer — were challenging for the residents,” said Dr. Horne. “However, unlike some media reports portrayed, it was not a scene of depravity. It was people who needed help.”
Helping underserved populations is, as Dr. Horne is quick to point out, part of his DNA. As a medical student in the rural South, he was required to do house calls as part of his training at the Medical University of South Carolina. He currently splits his time between New York City, where he is an assistant clinical professor of dermatology at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Cornell University Medical College and has a private practice, and Aroostook County. His commitment to serve patients in northern Maine comes largely because of the need he sees here.
“I have been coming to TAMC since my fellowship in Boston in 2006. There was a need and I wanted to ensure that the people of Aroostook County could access the kind of services that might not otherwise be offered locally. I liked the population here, so I decided to keep coming,” said Dr. Horne.
That same desire to serve has Dr. Horne now working on a diploma of tropical medicine to provide him with additional training so that he can again work with Doctors Without Borders.
“The good thing about American medical training is that we are first all taught as generalists, so I felt perfectly comfortable working with the residents of New York after Sandy. A first-world trained dermatologist is not probably in huge demand in Africa,” quipped Horne.
