On Puerto Rican Island, Ex-NYC Doc Finds Maria's Lingering Wrath

NEW YORK — As he flew into Puerto Rico this past February, Dr. Kirill Alekseyev thought the sea of blue he saw covering the landscape was an unusual color for the roofs of local homes. But as he got closer, he said, he realized he was seeing not roofs but tarps put up because of the wreckage Hurricane Maria had wrought about five months earlier.

“There was so much destruction,” Alekseyev said. “It was very touching that nature could cause something so horrible.”

That trip was one of two Alekseyev, who grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, took this year to provide medical help on the remote Puerto Rican island of Vieques. He made his second visit in early November.

More than a year after the storm, Alekseyev said the conditions he encountered on Vieques were a far cry from the New York City hospitals where he worked in recent years, or even his medical school at the American University of Antigua, another Caribbean island.

“They lost everything they had in this hurricane, and now they’re living on the basic minimum,” said Alekseyev, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist who now practices in Delaware. “They don’t have imaging. ... They don’t have basic medications. They don’t have access.”

Alekseyev traveled to Puerto Rico as a volunteer with C.H.A.M.P., a nonprofit that aims to provide medical and other support to relief missions. The group was founded by Dr. Pedro Torres, one of Alekseyev’s medical school classmates.

Maria struck when Torres was in his emergency medicine residency at St. Luke’s Hospital in Ponce, Puerto Rico, where he still works. After volunteering in some tough-to-reach parts of the island on his own, he organized C.H.A.M.P.'s first official mission to aid the recovery.

Torres rounded up volunteers with a range of backgrounds to head to Vieques, an island off Puerto Rico’s eastern coast that he said was in “dire need” of help. About 35 C.H.A.M.P. volunteers made the first trip in February and about 15 went on the second, both times assisting other organizations on the ground, Alekseyev said.

The ferry that normally serves the island wasn’t running properly when Alekseyev arrived in February, he said, so he had to take a plane from the municipality of Ceiba to get there. The drive to the airport was “pitch black” as the territory struggled with power problems, he said.

The doctors described a grim situation on Vieques, which Census figures show is home to about 8,600 people. The island’s hospital and pharmacy were closed on Alekseyev’s first visit, he said, and residents struggled to access medication and medical services. The hospital was open on his second trip, but only a single physician and two assistants were working there.

A doctor with whom Alekseyev was working examined one man who was coughing up blood and was thought to have either lung cancer or tuberculosis, which is much more contagious. He was sent for an X-ray, but the hospital couldn’t give him one.

“What do you want me to do?” Alekseyev recalled the hospital’s doctor saying. The patient was sent back to the clinic and eventually taken to the Puerto Rican mainland.

Physical health wasn’t the only concern. Mental health workers were among the C.H.A.M.P. volunteers on both trips, Torres said. The clinic had a group therapy station on the second visit that was able to put a smile on some people’s faces, Alekseyev said.

“A lot of people needed somebody to talk to,” he said.

Hurricane Maria killed nearly 3,000 people in Puerto Rico, according to a George Washington University report published in August. While the Trump administration has taken heat for its failure to help the U.S. territory, Torres said the September 2017 storm exposed the Puerto Rican government’s poor disaster planning and resource allocation.

It also shed light on the health care disparities Puerto Ricans face, Torres said. While San Juan was rebuilding on Alekseyev’s return trip last month, he said Vieques is still struggling.

“The island as a whole has to reconsider — instead of just putting tapes over the bruises — really reconsider what’s going to happen when the next storm comes around, because it’s not going to hold up for another storm of that magnitude,” Torres said. “I think the whole island might be wiped out.”

C.H.A.M.P. currently has a list of about 60 volunteers and is in the process of growing further, Torres said. The group plans to use its two trips this year as a “stepping stone” to raise awareness about it and eventually conduct its own independent missions, he said.

But one need not be a doctor to help with Puerto Rico’s continuing recovery.

“I think everybody should be involved one way or the other,” Alekseyev said. “It’s really just reaching out and seeing where there’s a need.”

(Lead image: Dr. Kirill Alekseyev made two trips this year to the remote Puerto Rican island of Vieques, which he said is still struggling more than a year after Hurricane Maria. Photos by Mike Jaya)