Mass. doctors in Iran find life amid death at quake site

After days of aiding critically wounded earthquake victims, members of a Boston-based team of medical specialists helped to deliver a baby girl yesterday, bringing a ray of hope to a scene of unrelenting despair.

"You can't imagine the joy and smiling faces among the people in the hospital," Marty Bahamonde, a US government spokesman with the group, said by phone. "The nurses used a [needleless] syringe to feed the baby with sugar water. They're very creative here."

The 58-member Boston team is the largest medical presence in Bam, said Bahamonde. It arrived on the first US plane to land in Iran since the failed military operation to rescue the US hostages in 1980, according to the State Department.

An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale devastated the city Dec. 26, killing an estimated 30,000 people. Another 20,000 were injured.

The Boston team flew last Saturday from Westover Joint Air Reserve Base with enough equipment and supplies for a self-sufficient hospital, including operating rooms and a triage center. By Thursday morning, the field hospital was open for business, and the team treated 300 patients by Friday night, mostly for head and orthopedic injuries and respiratory problems, said Bahamonde, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Yesterday, the girl was delivered to a Bam native about 12:30 p.m. eastern time by cesarean section. Two more women were in labor yesterday afternoon.

Dr. Annekathryn Goodman said the girl's birth represented "new life in the midst of so much death."

"It's a little renewal, a little rebirth after this terrible devastation here," said Goodman, a gynecological oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The International Medical Surgical Response team is the only one in the United States that is able to mobilize within about four hours and is the model for other teams being formed in Miami and Seattle, said Mark Libby, regional emergency coordinator for the National Disaster Medical System of Homeland Security.

Headed by surgeon Susan Briggs, the team is composed of surgeons, pediatric emergency room physicians, anesthesiologists, burn specialists, specialized nurses, paramedics, emergency medical technicians, and pharmacists. Twenty-six of them are from Massachusetts General Hospital. The team was formed in 1999 after the US Embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The medical team expects to stay in Bam for at least another week, until the Red Cross and local hospitals can set up field operations, Bahamonde said yesterday.

Five Iranian doctors are working with the Americans. The team performed its first orthopedic operation on an Iranian soldier who had accidentally shot himself in the foot, Bahamonde said. The Boston team landed early Monday in Kerman, Iran, 120 miles northwest of Bam. A caravan of trucks laden with medical equipment, water, packaged food, tents, generators, and cots headed to the devastated region.

"I've never seen anything like it," said paramedic Keith Lindsay in a phone interview from Bam earlier this week. "There was complete devastation. Most of . . . the buildings are, if not completely destroyed, severely damaged. Most of the roads are blocked with debris, and people are living in tents with bonfires" outside.

"There's lots and lots of traffic," he added. "There's lots of people roaming the streets looking for food."

Lindsay works for the Chelmsford Fire Department and serves on the Metro-Boston Disaster Medical Assistance Team. It is one of three Boston specialty teams from which Briggs chose members for the overseas group.

Units include a burn specialty team from the Shriners Burn Center and a pediatric team from Boston Children's Hospital. Members train throughout the year, preparing to mobilize within hours. They were called to the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and to Guam after a December 2002 typhoon.

This is the first time team members have traveled to a region not controlled by the United States, said paramedic Suzann Lindsay, who is also Keith Lindsay's wife. She has been serving as liaison to family members, providing updates about the team.

"I've been pretty much attached to the phone and the computer," she said from her Chelmsford home.

Kim Pitcher of New London, N.H., said she was happy that her husband, Chip Cooper, a paramedic for Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., went on the trip.

"This is what he loves to do," she said. "I feel like I have to be here. It's sort of like keeping the home fires burning, even though I know I don't have to."

Pitcher spoke to her husband by satellite phone Thursday and learned that the team had pitched the hospital tents that morning and performed the first operation that day on the soldier.

Stephen McGee of Canton said he spoke to his wife, Barbara McGee, a burn nurse in the emergency room at Mass. General, who had slept little since they began the grueling journey.

"She pursues this team, because they're a diverse group of people," McGee said. "They're different from the people you meet in the normal course of the day. They are really special."

The group's personal luggage was delayed several days, and they are working in a city with a contaminated water supply. There are no restroom or bathing facilities, and the hygiene issues are quickly turning into a public health crisis.

"They're concerned about cholera and typhoid," Bahamonde said. "There is little available water. What is available is contaminated."

The hardship of the trip is not what comes through in the long-distance phone calls. Jim Whelan of Waterbury, Conn., said his daughter Barbara Whelan of South Boston, a nurse at Mass. General, sounded upbeat.

"Everyone she's dealt with has been very nice," he said. "They're just looking for a lot of help."

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Joyce Pellino Crane can be reached at crane@globe.com.