BURBANK — Sitting in the comfort of his Burbank medical office, orthopedic surgeon Stephan Yacoubian flipped through photographs of a far different environment.
Ranging from snapshots of Haitian school children eagerly accepting candy to shots taken during surgical operations, the photos chronicle Yacoubian’s recent mission trip to Milot, Haiti with a team of 16 other medical professionals from across the U.S.
“You really gain a lot of perspective,” said Yacoubian, who made the trip with Dr. Raymond Raven, one of his partners at Orthopedic Surgery Specialists in Burbank. “You go somewhere like that, and you see how devastating it can be not to have basic medical services, how chaotic and how serious conditions can quickly become.”
While their weeklong trip organized by the nonprofit Crudem Foundation came more than a year after the earthquake that devastated Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, many patients still needed work related to injuries suffered during the catastrophe.