DURHAM -- April Perry, founder and chairman of the board of Luke's Mission, a Durham-based Christian nonprofit organization serving the poor of Haiti, said Saturday that she is on-call to travel to the earthquake ravaged nation.

She said in an e-mail that she hopes to be part of a team working with a Southern Baptist relief organization that will depart for the Caribbean nation within the next few days.

The group has already dispatched one team to the area and will be sending a second on a C-130 cargo plane with staff and supplies, according to Perry.

Perry added in her e-mail Saturday that several Haitian employees and workers with Luke's Mission have died or lost loved ones in the earthquake, and the conditions of many people affiliated with Luke's Mission in Haiti are unknown.

Perry, a clinical nurse educator at Duke HomeCare & Hospice, received Duke University Hospital's 2010 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Caregiver Award on Tuesday for her humanitarian and life-saving work in Haiti.

Perry's service to Haiti began on a medical mission trip in 2003. Perry later established Luke's Mission and set up a water-filtration system for the people of Belbede, Haiti.

-- Mark Donovan