Like many of us, Richard McGlaughlin, MD heard about the January 2010 Haiti earthquake soon after it happened via media reports. Images of injured and displaced Haitians and scenes of destruction sickened him.

Soon McGlaughlin, a gastroenterologist who owns a four-seat, single-engine aircraft, read a related request on his Cirrus Owners & Pilots Association (COPA) member forum. Aircraft owners were being asked by Bahamas Habitat to volunteer for flight missions to Haiti. Transport of essential supplies was needed because cargo ships weren’t able to get into Port-au-Prince. McGlaughlin, one of a group of COPA pilots who volunteered to fly down to assist, agreed to transport medical supplies. “At the time I had no idea that decision would end up changing my life,”he says.

McGlaughlin didn’t know that he was beginning a long-term charitable mission he continues to pursue: Helping Haiti recover both from the earthquake and the cholera epidemic associated with it. His fellow practitioners at Alabama Digestive Diseases support his efforts by allowing him to work part-time so he can visit Haiti on a monthly basis. “One of my partners, who is Jewish, said the work was a ‘mitzvah’ (calling) for me and would be for the whole group if they supported it,” McGlaughlin says.

After his first flight mission to Haiti, McGlaughlin kept running supplies until the port at Port-au-Prince reopened for supply ships. Then he began volunteering as a doctor as well as a pilot in rural areas. “The needs of the Haitians were so great I just couldn’t turn my back on them. I felt I could make a difference if I kept at it,” McGlaughlin says.

During the past several years, McGlaughlin has met many Americans who have gone to Haiti to volunteer a week or two, but he laments the fact that their efforts don’t have a lasting effect.  “Temporarily volunteering doesn’t do that much good because the problems are so severe. Giving a week of their time does more for the person who is volunteering than for the Haitians,” he says.

During October of 2010, runoff from a Nepalese U.N. camp fouled Haiti’s Artibonite River with cholera bacteria and a cholera epidemic soon spread. Because McGlaughlin had a background in cholera research and treatment, he stepped up his volunteer efforts in Haiti and soon was working in association with St. Luke's Hospital to help save as many cholera victims as possible. “It’s actually simple to treat if you can get to people in time. But when you don’t they can die,” he says.

After the worst of the beginning cholera epidemic was over, McGlaughlin volunteered to develop a gastroenterology lab at St. Luke’s, which is now run fulltime by a Haitian physician. Because proper sewage infrastructure is lacking in Haiti McGlaughlin suspects cholera will continue to be a significant problem there, especially during the rainy season. “The disease is on board for my lifetime, at a minimum,” McGlaughlin wrote in his blog entry on the COPA website.

McGlaughlin developed an expertise in cholera treatment during his work for the Johns Hopkins Division of Geographic Medicine in Dhaka, Bangla Desh in 1982. He had first been introduced to cholera during a stint in North India while a senior in medical school. “It’s not a glamorous disease, but it kills a lot of children worldwide. I found it worthwhile to learn about,” McGlaughlin says.

What took McGlaughlin to North India during medical school?  He points to his father serving as an airplane mechanic stationed in North India during World War II. “My dad was just a regular guy from New Jersey but listening to all his stories from North India made me want to go there,” McGlaughlin says. “When I got in medical school, I realized there were opportunities to study abroad and so I took advantage of that.”

Little did he know that his bit of wanderlust would lead to saving lives in Haiti. “It’s good to be able to be useful,” he says.

Regularly flying down to Haiti hasn’t come without challenges. McGlaughlin has had some misadventures along the way, including an ill-fated flight with his daughter, Elaine, a public health major at UAB, in January 2012. A severe loss of oil pressure on the way from the airport in Nassau to Haiti required him to pull his aircraft’s emergency parachute.

The chute allowed for a gentler splash down of Cirrus in the water. Then McGlaughlin and his daughter climbed onto their life raft to wait for help that was on the way. Reports of their crash landing and related fundraising efforts brought in more than $100,000 in donations to the St. Luke Foundation. “The experience didn’t sour my daughter on Haiti, but it did make her think twice about flying in small aircraft,” McGlaughlin says.