Citizen of the Year 2007: Gilbert Irwin, M.D.
At age 65, there is just no quit in Gilbert Irwin, M.D.
The bespectacled doctor from Haymarket, his gray and thinning hair doing nothing to mask his age, can endlessly recite stories of heartbreak, trauma and death without adjusting the volume of his voice much above a matter-of-fact monotone.
He does not lack sympathy, and he certainly cares.
It's just that after treating thousands of the world's poorest people for the last 10 years, emotion does not permeate from him too often when he speaks of the impoverished.
But the touch of his hand and drive of his heart are felt around the world.
And that is what makes Gilbert Irwin, head of the Manassas-based non-profit Medical Missionaries, the Citizen of the Year for 2007.
For every one story he tells about a withered and maimed individual, he may be able to recite another 10 accounts of people who are even more hard-up.
Ask him about a typical machete wound he treats on his annual trips to Haiti, where his clients have nothing but scars on their bodies and a will to live.
“Well, you see usually a very large laceration,” Irwin said last month on a blustery December afternoon behind Linton Hall School in Bristow. “(It's) six or seven inches across a thigh or a leg and it's usually right down to the bone because the machete is so sharp and it's swung with momentum, so it goes right through the bone, you know?”
The volunteer doctors of the Medical Missionaries then attempt to patch up similarly wounded people, usually males who hack away at rice patties and sugar cane barefoot in the fields.
“We can't close them entirely surgically because of contamination but we try to treat them,” said Irwin. “And we give them antibiotics and follow them up at the clinic.”
Then, there is the 4- or 5-year-old boy who spent his short life literally crawling across town because his disease-riddled legs had no support system, like a basic brace or crutch.
“We've got him a little pediatric-like walker type of thing,” the New Jersey native said, noting that the child could then finally get the tops of his feet off the ground.
None of the patients who seek treatment in Thomassique, Haiti at the Clinique de St. Joseph, which has been open for exactly one year this month, ever have to pay. Nevertheless, many offer, even if it is just the American equivalent of a couple of quarters.
“If people don't have the 40 or 50 cents, they're seen anyway,” Irwin explained. “The idea is, a lot of people want to contribute something and want to, in a dignified way, say they paid for their service.”
Extending free care locally is part of Irwin's calling too, even though he runs a for-profit private practice office in Manassas as his day job.
“We gave a hospital bed to a fellow who was a diabetic,” said Irwin, referring to a bilateral amputee who lived with his family on the third floor of a townhouse. “He outlived his insurance and, for some reason, they were going to take his bed away.”
Up the three flights of stairs, Irwin and his crew ascended, carrying a bed in parts because it was too big to fit neatly in through the stairwell.
“Well, when you do this business, you learn a lot about how to get things from one place to another,” he said.
Shipping supplies from western Prince William County to places all over the world directly fits into Irwin's know-how. This year alone, the Medical Missionaries sent out 15 cargo containers filled with everything from crutches to stretchers to countries including Ukraine, Moldova, Congo, Sierra-Leone, Kenya, Somalia, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
The last load of the year, packed by about 60 volunteers ranging from high schoolers to senior citizens, was scheduled to go to Ghana, another new destination for the Medical Missionaries.
“Oh, it'll help thousands,” said Irwin, who estimated the contents of the container were worth roughly $750,000. “A lot of that stuff is basic hospital equipment, supplies.”
Medical contents have to be basic too, much more so then one would typically think.
“Well, we try to keep it as simple as possible because the end places where these are going are usually without electricity or water,” he said.
At the time, Irwin was set to ship himself out, too, only with his destination being his pride and joy in Thomassique, Haiti.
“I think it's important to try to sustain this operation because so many people depend on it,” he said, later adding, “and, you know, when you see it up front and close, and you go to these places and whatnot, you realize that what you're doing is so vital to these people that it's hard to walk away from.
“And I personally can't do that. That's why I'm still here.”