Christina Jepperson wanted to head off to Haiti the moment she heard about the January earthquake.

“My first thought was, ‘Oh my God, I have to do something,’” said Jepperson, a registered nurse from Lyman who works in intensive care at the University of Washington and the emergency room at Skagit Valley Hospital.

She said hers is a common response among medical workers. Those with the skills feel they need to get on the ground and working as soon as possible, Jepperson said.

“There are people here who can take care of my job, but there’s nobody in Haiti that can give my skills,” Jepperson said.

Jepperson is one of dozens of people from the Skagit County area who have asked to leave work and travel to Haiti to provide much-needed medical assistance.

Jepperson was in the first group of Skagit Valley Hospital staff to head to the earthquake-ravaged country on Feb. 3 through an organization called International Medical Assistance Team (IMAT) in Snohomish County.

Public Health Officer and emergency room doctor Howard Leibrand returns today along with several other nurses from Skagit Valley Hospital and the Skagit County Department of Health from the latest trip organized by IMAT.

The organization has formed six teams so far; the last will be heading out March 23.

Director Chris Tompkins said he noticed the last two teams were heavily staffed by Skagit-area nurses and doctors.

“People come back and talk about their experience,” Tompkins said. “It probably compels (other) people to do something.”

The local doctors and nurses who have visited Haiti say the help they provide won’t fix the country’s ailing medical infrastructure, but will provide some interim help. However, as the rainy season sets in, Jepperson said doctors and nurses are concerned about the elevated risk of diseases like yellow fever and cholera spreading among the homeless populace.

Kirk Brownell, a doctor from Skagit Valley Hospital, said most of the medical help he provided was for untreated problems that weren’t directly related to the earthquake. He said people have ongoing medical issues, but no doctors to help them.

Brownell said the help he was giving to the Haitians was just a fraction of what they would receive if they were in the United States. He saw one man with high blood pressure who would have been admitted to Skagit Valley Hospital if he showed up at the emergency room. But in Haiti, doctors and nurses can only provide limited treatment for those problems.

“There I just have to pat them on the head and say, ‘your blood pressure is dangerously high,’” Brownell said.

Jepperson said medical staff are working with what few resources they have and far outside their specialized fields.

Brownell said while the teams probably wouldn’t make any lasting difference to Haiti’s health care system as a whole, individuals would likely benefit greatly.

“I think it would be easy to be discouraged, but I found it rewarding,” Brownell said.

The work is growing tougher for doctors and nurses still in Haiti who are treating patients in increasingly wet and rainy conditions.

Leibrand has kept a blog at howardinhaiti.blogspot.com where he wrote this week the rain has worsened since he arrived.

“I can’t imagine what the camps must be like,” Leibrand wrote, commenting the medical workers were given better accommodations. “Some people have full tents, but some just have tarps and sheets over poles.”

Jepperson has been encouraged back home by the collaborative process that allowed her to go to Haiti. She said she hopes this attitude continues.

She told students at Lyman Elementary School Monday morning “it takes a village” to send people like her to Haiti. Neighbors and family watched her kids while she was gone, and community donations paid for medical supplies. Coworkers stepped up and filled in for her shifts at Skagit Valley Hospital and the University of Washington Medical Center.

Jepperson praised the students at Lyman who, like students in many other U.S. schools, raised money by collecting pennies. Lyman students donated $500 to the Red Cross after a week of donations.

Tompkins hopes people will continue to volunteer to help. He said convincing people to volunteer is becoming more difficult, and he’s noticed aid groups huddling together to keep the relief work moving along.

“The need isn’t going away,” he said “We’d like to march teams out indefinitely.”

• Aaron Burkhalter can be reached at 360-416-2141 or .

Read more local news in the Skagit Valley Herald and the Anacortes American, or read it online in the E-edition