by Kate McGraw | Albuquerque Journal | 4/26/2010

It was the concrete dust in the air of Port-au-Prince that sent Santa Fe naturopath Andrew Lustig home after a few weeks. “I usually stay (on a humanitarian mission) longer, but I had to leave for my own health,” Lustig, who is also an emergency medical technician, said of his early April trip. “I’ll be going back, though.”

Lustig is both a naturopathic doctor, which means he treats patients through an array of natural therapies, homeopathic remedies and holistic approaches, and a licensed Emergency Medical Technician-I. He is a member of the New Mexico Disaster Medical Assistance Team (D-MAT) that has responded to many natural disasters in this country and internationally.

When the 7.0 quake struck Haiti on Jan. 12, however, Lustig was in Nicaragua on a humanitarian mission and couldn’t deploy with his DMAT team, he said. “I finished up in Nicaragua and when I got back I did work here for a while and then went to Haiti,” he said. From March 29 through April 6, Lustig served with two organizations in Port-au-Prince: Homeopaths without Borders and the International Medical Corps. This kind of help is intense, he said. “It’s just work, eat, sleep, work ― doing what we can to help,” Lustig said.

From 7 a.m. to noon he worked as a Naturopathic Doctor, and the rest of a long day, in a different part of the city, he worked in large military tents erected beside what remained of the Port-au-Prince hospital. The tents served as emergency medicine centers. Most of the injuries we treated included lacerations, kidney infections, viral/bacterial infections, eye issues, uncontrolled diabetes, dehydration, pregnancy issues, high blood pressure, sepsis, poison ingestion, gastro intestinal issues, etc., he said. “We were not doing amputations; those crush injuries had been mostly treated by the time I was there,” he said. “But we were dealing with diseases related to poverty and hygiene issues. Most of the people are still living in tents ― if they had tents ― and the rainy season had begun. They’re living in closer proximity to each other as well as waste, human and otherwise. I saw people shower in the streets with dirty water from pools in the street. That population comes to the ER very sick.”

What Haiti needs now is a sustainable plan for health care, sanitation, and economic growth.

As a Naturopathic Doctor, we treated similar problems, but were also effective in treating many emotional issues, he said. “It was not uncommon for people who still had a fairly nice house standing to be sleeping outside. There was a lot of fear, and there are very effective homeopathic remedies for emotional distress.”

Lustig spent the first 20 years of his adult life building a corporate media business and chasing financial success. Some stress and health issues, as well as lack of time with his children, made him reassess his life. He began his career in healing practices by becoming an EMT in Connecticut. Then, he studied to become a naturopathic doctor, moved to Santa FE and began his practice. His regular humanitarian trips in this country and overseas are a way of expressing gratitude for his own fortunate circumstances, he said. He travels frequently to Africa, Asia and Central America to provide health care.

“It used to be that I measured my success in dollars, profit, and business growth,” he said. Now, he added, “I measure it in how many patients I treat, and what kind of care I have   provided them. You can do that here in New Mexico ― and I do ― but the gratitude that you receive in developing countries, where they don’t have any sense of entitlement, is tremendous. That will keep you going for a while.”

Lustig said there’s no conflict between his half-conventional and half-alternative style of working. “The place for Western medicine is emergency medicine,” he said. “The diagnosis and technology that Western medicine can offer is amazing.

“Homeopathic medicine,   which is natural and holistic, is also effective for acute care, but particularly good for long term palliative treatment. In a situation like this, the two can complement each other.”  In addition, for continuous care, homeopathic medicine offers benefits for developing countries, he added. “The medicines are not patentable, so they are cheap; the treatment often does not have side effects and symptoms that require other medicines to treat, and it does not have toxic effects on other organs in the body,” he said.

Lustig took approximately 7,000 pills, powders and   herbal tinctures with him to Haiti, and he and other homeopaths used them all. The medicines were donated by manufacturers.

“The entire world is in Haiti right now,” he said. “I worked beside military doctors from Italy and Brazil. The Haitians’ eyes are wide open. They have never seen the resources that this international effort brings. They’ve rarely ever been given thousands of sacks of rice. The lines for those foods extended for miles.” Eventually, the NATO forces and others will go home, Lustig said. “What Haiti needs now is a sustainable plan for health care and sanitation, and for economic growth,” he said. “What happens way too often in these disaster efforts is that we come in and offer immediate treatment, but we can’t offer continual care unless we stay there or set up a clinic.

“Everywhere I go, no matter how much we do, the question is the same: ‘When are you coming back?’ I try to stay in touch. I make continual donations to places I’ve worked,” he said. “I’m trying to continue to send medicines to practitioners who are based there. And in Haiti, I do hope to return. I will go back.”