From Haiti to Thunder Bay, a former longtime local nurse has been using her skills to help those in need as part of a Christian relief and disaster response team called Samaritan’s Purse.
Dorothy Henson has been volunteering with Samaritan’s Purse since 2010. She says she first learned about the group after working with Canadian Medical Assistance Teams (CMAT).
“Back in 2010 I went with Canadian Medical Assistance Teams to Haiti after the earthquake and helped out there for a few weeks,” she recalls. “When I came back, I googled medical Christian disaster response and Samaritan’s Purse first came up.”
“So I got involved with them, I went back to Haiti in December with them for the cholera epidemic and just went off from there.”
Before joining Samaritan's Purse, Henson was a nurse at Guelph General Hospital for 10 years. After joining the organization, she began working as an operation nurse at Groves Memorial Community Hospital, doing part-time before switching to a casual role. She now lives in Washago, ON.
Since joining Samaritan's Purse, Henson has been deployed to countries like Nepal, Ecuador, Liberia, the Bahamas and more.
On many of these deployments, Henson says volunteers sleep in tents, or on the floor, and work 12 hour days. Despite those things, she says the work is very rewarding.
“It’s easy for me, I don't mind the travel, I like to travel, I can sleep on the ground, I can eat what’s given to me,” she says about those experiences, "I just like helping.
“I like the people that I work with, they’re awesome.”
From all these experiences, Henson adds she has become very grateful to live in Canada.
“We are totally blessed where we live, totally.” she says.
In her latest deployment, Henson went to Thunder Bay to help provide medical support for vulnerable residents during a COVID-19 outbreak. According to a release from Samaritan's Purse, the Thunder Bay region has the highest COVID-19 rate in Ontario.
“The homeless they got the COVID and they had to close the shelters,” she explains about the situation, “There was nowhere for them to go and they were COVID-positive.”
On top of that, Henson says staff working with the homeless population were becoming infected with COVID.
From Feb. 27 to March 17, Henson and a team of volunteers helped treat roughly 150 patients between two hotels in Thunder Bay while a majority of staff recovered.
“We just went there, helped out and took over,” says Henson, “There were 17 of us that went ... until they were back on their feet, hired more staff, and they’re back on their feet now.”
For those who are interested in participating in disaster relief, Henson says Samaritan's Purse provides the training, but you need to be versatile and resilient to do this type of work.
“If you can get along with people and you’re not too rigid in your eating habits,” she says, “And you can sleep on the ground when needed, if you’re versatile, versatile is the whole thing, and resilient.
“If you’ve got some of that in you, then you’re good to go.”
To learn more about Samaritan’s Purse, go to samaritanspurse.ca.
