Basri pitched in to tend to displaced residents in Red Cross Shelter:
Hall E
HOUSTON – Dr. Raymond Basri of Middletown is no stranger to volunteering
in emergency situations. He was at the World Trade Center immediately
after the 9/11 attacks and has attended to first responders’ health
concerns in many natural disaster situations.
Basri is now in Houston providing health care assistance to the firefighters
and first responders who have been helping the citizenry with their Hurricane
Harvey relief.
Basri
Those firefighters – including professional paid members of the
International Association of Firefighters and local volunteer company
members from around Texas and the southwest – need their own care
and Basri flew down to aid in that effort.
“These guys are really putting themselves at risk being in the
contaminated floodwaters,” he said. “We know the floodwaters
contain high amounts of sewage, raw fecal material, very high counts of
e-coli and coliform bacteria, all of this potentially very infectious
to anybody coming in contact with it.”
Basri wrote the memo for the firefighters union members to do self-evaluations
at least twice per day. He and the other volunteer doctors have begun
a vigorous vaccination program with the e-tap vaccine, which is diphtheria,
tetanus and pertussis, and they hope to have hepatitis-a vaccinations
to the firefighters.
Basri said the firefighters are putting the community ahead of their own
families in many cases.
The doctor later spent part of the day Sunday at a Red Cross shelter
for those who have been displaced.
