HYDROCEPHALUS = EXCLUSION

The government is discouraging exclusion according to this poster that I saw one day while driving around, but this week I saw the exclusion of the handicapped on several occassions regarding mothers and their hydrocephalus children. We host mothers who live out in the provinces when they come into Port-au-Prince for the surgeries and evaluations for their babies and we encourage them to contact us when they have problems. 2 times this week a mother has called seeking medical care for her child because it was refused by doctors and hospitals in the provinces. Why is it that a pediatrician can not treat normal pediatric illnesses? As soon as they see that it is a hydrocephalus child they say that they can't help the child and tell the mother to go where the surgery was done or go see a neurosurgeon even though the child's problem is not brain related. The mothers are poor and the travel costs to Port-au-Prince are high for them. I got 2 calls of desperation from these mothers and told the mothers to borrow the money and I would give them money to give back once their child received treatment. The 2 mothers came into Port-au-Prince. The lack of medical care for hydrocephalus children here in Haiti has to change. At the present time Bernard Mevs/Project Medishare Hospital, and General Hospital care for these children. That's it. Anywhere else these children are refused care. Pray for a restructuring of the Haitian health system so that the rights of hydrocephalus children are respected by the medical professionals. It is frustrating when a baby gets refused treatment for diarrhea, cold, or other pediatric problems that have nothing to do with hydrocephalus. This is my rant against the Haitian Health System today.

This grandmother is doing her best to look after her grandson. The mother is dead. She is having difficulty providing for him and has been seeking an orphanage for him. I read in an article that I posted today on my blog that there has been assistance plan set up for families to stop abandoning of children. It sure would be nice to have some sort of program in place for hydrocephalus families. These mothers/grandmothers could use a helping hand. Haitian society makes it difficult for the parents while they try to look after their child.

One example is Vanessa's mother. I got a call the other week from her sister and said that Vanessa's mother had come down from Fond Verette and the family had not heard from her. Vanessa was left with family. I don't know yet how the situation turned out, but I know that it was out of desperation that Vanessa's mother left the family to seek work to provide for her family. Pray that Vanessa is looked after and that her mother can provide for her family.

This young mother (not Stephanie, who is holding the baby :), in the pink shirt came for the hydrocephalus classes at Healing Hands before the surgery of her child. She is a happy and positive woman. But once she headed back to the Milot area in the north of the country she lost some of her optimism. Her child got sick with diarrhea and the mother said that her baby kept crying at night and didn't get much sleep. The hospital in Milot wouldn't treat her and she called for help to get to Port-au-Prince. She came to us and went to Bernard Mevs/Project Medishare Hospital and saw a doctor. The baby is doing better now. But this once positive mother wants to now place her child in an orphanage. She has another child too who can't walk yet because of malnutrition. One thing these mothers don't realize is that it is difficult to find an orphanage and I don't know very many people who will take in a hydrocephalus child. She was crying this morning when I tried to encourage her to keep her child. The fact that she had to come in from the north discouraged her. Pray for this mother as she struggles to provide for her children.

Claudine and her baby Dalwensky came in from a rural area in the Jacmel region. She also has been struggling to provide for him. Yesterday she abandoned Dalwensky without me knowing about it in our yard. When we finally figured out that she wasn't coming back we had a difficult situation to handle. I contacted Chris Nungester of HIS Home for Children and she will be accepting him into her orphanage. The other option I had was going over to General Hospital and talking with social services about placing the child in the abandoned ward. Pray for more support programs for these hydrocephalus mothers and also for the changing of people's attitudes in Haitian society, both in the communities where they live and also in the medical community here in Haiti.