“See, a king will reign in righteousness and rulers will rule with justice. Each man will be like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from the storm, like streams of water in the desert and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land.” Isaiah 32:1,2
Hi! This was a busy week with the medical program. On Thursday Dr. Ed brought a medical team to Cite Soleil to hold a clinic. They ended up seeing around 220 people for medical consultations and Ed did some teeth pulling for around 25 people. The people of Cite Soleil are grateful when these clinics are held and we give the Lord thanks for people who are willing to go there. Cite Soleil has a bad reputation and this reputation causes people to avoid the area. We used the Maranatha church to host the clinic, which is located on the main road of Cite Soleil. There were 4 consultation areas plus the registration table at the front of the church and the dental area was located at the back. The church is large so there was no problem seating everyone on the church benches while they waited. We handed out comic book style evangelical tracts to people as they left the clinic. In the afternoon we handed them out to people who were passing in front of the church. One of the young guys who hung out by the church while the clinic was going on wanted to help to distribute them. He’s a tough guy but insisted that he wanted to help. The school kids who walked by on their way home from school all wanted one and it didn’t take long to hand out around 400 tracts. It was fun to watch the children’s enthusiasm as they came and asked for one. Other adults walking down the street stopped and asked for one too.
Jonel Colo and his mother came to the house this week. She came to show me his head. He is one of the babies who already had surgery to treat his hydrocephalus. Unfortunately the surgery didn’t stop his head from continuing to enlarge. He needs a second operation to install a shunt but as is the problem for these babies with the large heads the skin has broken down on both sides of his head and he has 2 large pressure sores. Usually they can’t perform surgery on these children when they have these sores. I told the mother to make sure she comes for the upcoming neurosurgery evaluations at Hopital La Paix on March 27th. The team from Miami will be visiting on the 27th and 28th evaluating new cases and doing post-op checks on children who have had surgery already. From these evaluations a list of surgical patients will be made and the team will return again on April 4th to perform surgeries. Pray for the evaluations that will take place and for the plans being made to hold the hydrocephalus surgeries at Hopital La Paix.
I went with Hosanna to Haitian Social Services (IBESR) with the child that she is looking after to help her find an orphanage to place the child. The child’s father is a gang member. Once she gets a birth certificate made one of the social workers will help to place her in an orphanage.
We are also trying to find an orphanage to help a father place one of his children. The mother died and he can’t raise her and wants to put her up for adoption. I told him what paperwork he needed to have to make this possible and he brought the papers to show me this week. Hopefully next week this girl will be accepted into the orphanage.
Sister Genevieve contacted me about a child that she was trying to find help for. Rose Taina is 21 months old and has already been hospitalized at Bernard Mevs Hospital for malnutrition a couple of times. She was concerned that the child would die if she stayed with her family. The mother has HIV and Rose Taina does as well. The father left the family and the mother is on her own. She does the best she can to provide for her 2 children but is very poor. Sister Genevieve has been helping the family from time to time by giving them food. The mother is enrolled in the HIV treatment program at Bernard Mevs Hospital. They do not have a program for children. The doctors tell the HIV patients that they need to eat before taking their medicine. Someone who is poor cannot always eat if they don’t have money to buy food. The medicine is hard on the stomach if taken without food, so this mother’s solution is not to take the medicine when she doesn’t have food. The prognosis for this mother’s health is not good if she continues to do this. The HIV will not be able to be controlled then. I contacted Dorothy of Faith, Love Hope Rescue Mission and she had a place available for Rose. On Friday afternoon I brought the family over to Dorothy’s and she is now in her care. Rose is very frail. She is 21 months old and only weighs 10 pounds. Because of her malnutrition and HIV she is weak. She is currently on a feeding tube because she doesn’t want to eat or drink. Pray for Rose’s health and for those looking after her. Pray also that she will be accepted into the HIV program at the children’s hospital on Tabarre. Haiti is doing better on control of HIV. In 1996 the infection rate was 6.2% of the population and it has now gone down to 2.2%. International funding of HIV programs allows people with HIV to receive free medications.
This week the mayor of Delmas has been busy enforcing building violations. In the Delmas 19 area workers demolished houses constructed near the road. Police provided security for those workers. A lot of people were affected and are now homeless.
March 22nd is World Water Day. This week in Istanbul, Turkey the 3rd World Water Forum was held. A Water Poverty Index was published in 2002 and Haiti had the distinction of being the worst country in the world for water poverty out of 147 countries. The 10 worst countries on the WPI are all in the developing world – Haiti, Niger, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Malawi, Djibouti, Chad, Benin, Rwanda, Burundi. The best country on the WPI is Finland. Canada is next. The WPI is calculated according to resources, access, capacity, use, and environmental impact. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island but their WPI scores are far apart. The Dominican Republic is in 64th place. Reasons given for differences between the 2 countries are that Haiti’s resources are less well developed, with less infrastructure, and the Dominican people have significantly better access to water than there is in Haiti. The Dominican people also score higher in capacity, use and environment.
That’s all the news for today. Happy Water Day and have a good week!
Karen Bultje, Coram Deo
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