COURTESY PHOTO | Rich Ruppenstein, a physician assistant from Miller Place, gives medical treatment to victims of the Haiti earthquake.

Rich Ruppenstein landed at an airport two miles outside of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. It was three days after last year’s earthquake that devastated one of the poorest countries on the planet. He stepped into a vehicle and drove down streets made of crushed rocks with gaping potholes.

“If you look at pictures of Japan after the atomic bomb, you see one or two concrete buildings standing and everything else destroyed,” Mr. Ruppenstein said. “That’s what Port-au-Prince looked like.”

As he drove to his destination, he peered out the windows at giant stacks of garbage atop even bigger piles of rubble. Small children rummaged through looking for scraps of food. When he stepped out of the car, the smell of corpses consumed him.

Mr. Ruppenstein, a physician assistant and wound care specialist from Miller Place, treated 800 people along Haiti’s streets and alleyways in the 11 days he spent there after the earthquake. Now, he’s rounded up local friends and is building a medical center for the non-profit organization Wings Over Haiti.

Wings Over Haiti, which formed shortly after the earthquake, aims to provide for the needs of Haiti’s children and the organization currently serves 43 children, who fondly call Mr. Ruppenstein “Dr. Rich.” The organization has bought land for a schoolhouse, drilled for water and has plans for a fruit orchard, fish farm and vegetable garden so people can gather food to sell and eat.

Just before an interview with a reporter on Thursday, Johnathan Glynn, the founder and director, was flipping through photographs of a funeral for a child in the organization, Jean Elie Cadet, who had died due to malnutrition. The organization feeds each child but Jean was secretly savings his food to bring home to his parents who were starving.

“He essentially starved himself to feed his parents,” Mr. Glynn said. “This child would not have died if we had our own medical clinic.”

Mr. Glynn said child health issues are pervasive in the country and desperately need to be addressed. The infant mortality rate in Haiti in 2011 is 54 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to the CIA World Factbook.

Mr. Ruppenstein, who flies to Haiti every three months, is currently raising money for his medical center, which he hopes will begin to materialize in September. The total cost will be about $20,000, including equipment. He has about $8,000 so far.

“If we have four walls, a couple of rooms and doors and a couple of yachts, that’s what the medical center will be,” he said.

He plans to build a 30-by-30-foot facility with three exam rooms, a kitchen, bathroom, laboratory, waiting room, administrative room and closet. Bob Engel of Bob Engel Plumbing and Heating in Miller Place will help with the construction of the medical center, as well as with water lines and drainage at the work site.

“It’s not easy,” Mr. Engel said. “They just need so much help down there.”

Haitians will also help build the facility and the center will be staffed with locals.

On trips to Haiti, Mr. Ruppenstein has gone on medical missions to remote areas, driving through mountains, walking through cow paths and banana tree jungles, and swinging on ropes to cross a river. He pitches a tent on the roof of an orphanage at night since there isn’t anywhere else to stay.

He said access to clean water is a major problem throughout the country and he’s dug a well and built a water filtration system for the community near Wings Over Haiti’s campus.

Haiti has no public water service, but bags of water are available for one cent.

“They can’t afford that,” Mr. Ruppenstein said. “They don’t have a penny. So they drink bad water and often get cholera.”

He and Mr. Glynn have hope that the medical center will improve life for the children in the foundation and the surrounding community.

“We’re shooting for a sustainable village where when we’re done completing [the medical center] we can turn it over to the community and they can run it,” he said.

“It’s not something that’s going to be in Haiti for a few years,” Mr. Glynn added. “It’s going to be there for a lifetime to come.”

To donate to Wings Over Haiti, go to WingsOverHaiti.org, and for more information, e-mail [email protected].

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