Humanitarian Trip to Montserrat

August 2003

Philip J. "PJ" Azzolina (right) teaching life support skills.

As Vice President of the Sterling Virginia Rescue Squad and an American Heart Association Basic Life Support Instructor Trainer, Philip J. "PJ" Azzolina was prepared for the humanitarian trip to the West Indies island of Montserrat to teach its health care providers life support skills.

In December 2002, PJ and a team that included his wife, who is an emergency room physician at George Washington University Hospital and one of her medical students, an advanced trained paramedic, traveled to Montserrat to provide desperately needed life support training to more than 50 healthcare professionals. Montserrat has an active volcano that came to life in 1995, destroying the capital. In 1997, the volcano erupted several times, killing people and pelting the southern portion of the island with fiery gas, rocks and ash. Since 1995, the island population of 13,000 has been reduced to 4,000 because most of the Montserratians fled for safety.

Last year while PJ and his wife were working with an ophthalmology group that was making an annual humanitarian trip to Montserrat, they wanted to offer more help. The island's chief medical doctor informed them that they really needed Basic Life Support and Advanced Life Support instruction to keep their medical and emergency staffs up to speed.

For one week, PJ and the team set up life saving classes and taught health care provider classes to physicians, nurses, firefighters, elderly caregivers, ambulance drivers, and other first responder islanders.

PJ finds that "we live in a very fast-paced area that doesn't lend itself toward community service," so he reached out and became a member of the rescue squad in Sterling, Virginia. Reaching even further, he was able to help an island that had special meaning to him. He proposed to his wife in Montserrat in 1995. She stayed on the island to attend medical school and became one of the refugees during the initial eruption. With her medical training and PJ's emergency care knowledge, they were able to provide great value on this humanitarian trip.

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