THE WORLD NEEDS MORE HEALTH-CARE WORKERS - MILLIONS MORE
(The Week) - By Bill Frist
The most impressive part of any hospital or health clinic is the caring, skilled employees who prevent and treat illness. But the workforce we have is not enough
As I visit health programs in far off corners of the world and right here at home, the most impressive part of any hospital or clinic is the health workers themselves — the hands behind the health care that is provided to mothers and newborns, to children and the elderly, to teens and adults to prevent and treat illness.
Health workers heal. It's as simple as that. And in this country, and around the world, there are not enough of them. Doctors are included in that shortage, but it doesn't stop there. Recent estimates suggest the world is short some 4 million to 5 million community health workers, midwives, pharmacists, lab technicians, nurses, and doctors. Fifty-seven countries have severe health workforce shortages — meaning there are less than 23 clinicians per 10,000 people.
And health workers, particularly in developing countries, are scarcest in the poorest communities and neighborhoods — both rural and urban — where poverty, poor sanitation, and disease conspire to take the lives of children and adults through preventable killers like pneumonia, diarrhea, pregnancy complications, and tuberculosis.
Fifty-seven countries have severe health workforce shortages.
Later this week I am heading back to Haiti with the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund to review past investments in sustainable human health capital. Haiti is in dire need of indigenous health workers who are from and remain committed to their local communities. Long-term health and economic results can only be achieved by partnering with Haitians to build health training and service programs that they own and that they populate.
In targeted areas around the world, training armies of much-needed health workers has become a smart, key goal of U.S. foreign assistance. We are helping train new midwives, community health workers, lab technicians, and nurses through partnering programs supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These new health workers are serving in communities hardest hit by infectious diseases and the complications from pregnancy and childbirth.
And it works! Countries that have made a concerted effort to increase the numbers and skills of their health workforces have shown tremendous progress: Malawi has trained more than 10,000 health surveillance assistants in the past 20 years, and in the same period child mortality dropped almost 60 percent. In India, turning normal community members into lay health workers to support healthier newborn care practices reduced newborn deaths by over 50 percent.
Training community-level health workers does not have to be expensive — people who can provide the most basic levels of treatment for sick children and promote healthy practices can be trained for as little as $300. More-skilled community health workers and midwives cost roughly 10 times that amount to train. These workers provide the lifesaving interventions needed to address most of the leading causes of death of newborns and children — all with no need for huge medical school bills. It's basic health care, but it is lifesaving.
Highlighting the humble service of health workers around the world is the subject of a campaign launched by Save the Children, with whom I have traveled to countries like Bangladesh and Mozambique to witness these health workers going about their daily tasks. The care is effective and affordable. In fact, I think we in the U.S. have a lot to learn from these community health workers delivering local care. Take a look at some of the powerful stories at www.goodgoes.org , where you glimpse the simple and affordable care provided by people who go the extra mile on behalf of others.
No matter what diseases and conditions are threatening, and what new technologies for treatment might come along, we can say for sure that progress will depend on an expanded army of health workers, properly trained and placed, with the right skills and supplies, intent on delivering the best quality health care possible.
As we look at America's international assistance around the world, surely one of the best examples of success can be seen in the faces of these committed community servants.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. William H. Frist is a nationally acclaimed heart transplant surgeon, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader, the chairman of Hope Through Healing Hands and Tennessee SCORE, professor of surgery, and author of six books. Learn more about his work at BillFrist.com.
Showing posts with label Articles - Health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Articles - Health. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
ARTICLE - CHILD MALNUTRITION SURVEY - HAITI
NEW SURVEY SHOWS RATES OF CHILD MALNUTRITION ARE DECREASING IN HAITI
(UNICEF) - By Suzanne Suh
PORT-AU-PRINCE – In March, slightly more than two years after Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake, UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP) supported the Ministry of Health’s national SMART nutrition survey.
SMART – which stands for Standardized Monitoring and Assessment of Relief and Transitions – is an improved survey method based on the two most vital, basic public health indicators to assess the severity of a humanitarian crisis: nutritional status of children under age 5 and mortality rate of the population.
These indicators are useful for assessing needs and prioritizing resources, as well as for monitoring the extent to which a relief system is meeting the needs of the population and, thus, the understanding overall impact of the relief response.
SMART was initiated mainly to improve the technical capacity of implementing partners to carry out, analyze, interpret and report on survey findings in a standardized manner to ensure reliability of nutrition and health data. SMART’s main goal is to make the survey process as easy as possible for field staff and as reliable as possible for decision-makers. It is recognized as a critical step in improving worldwide emergency assessment.
A long history of undernutrition
Even before the earthquake on January 12, 2010, rates of undernutrition among children in Haiti were among the highest in the Latin America and Caribbean region. In 2005, one out of every three children under five was stunted, or chronically undernourished; one out of 10 was wasted, or acutely malnourished; and six out of 10 were anaemic. In addition, about one fourth of all children were born with low birth weight.
Shortly after the earthquake, UNICEF and partners supported the Government of Haiti in providing earthquake-affected families with crucial humanitarian assistance. Emergency nutrition interventions were provided to prevent and treat child undernutrition and reduce the risk of child mortality. These included education and counselling on optimal infant and young child feeding practices, such as exclusive breastfeeding. UNICEF also provided micronutrient supplementation for mothers and children, including iron and folic acid supplements, multiple micronutrient powders and tablets, vitamin A supplements, and deworming tablets. UNICEF also supported the integrated management of severe acute malnutrition.
Since then, these interventions have been delivered across the country through 198 baby tents and baby-friendly centres – safe spaces where mothers can breastfeed, which also provide formula for orphans and children whose mothers were not able to breastfeed. These interventions have also been provided at 24 hospital and 290 community-based therapeutic feeding programs for children suffering from severe acute malnutrition, and at mass distribution campaigns. UNICEF has also supported basic maternal and child health services (in particular immunization) in health facilities, and has provided safe drinking water and hygiene and sanitation services in camps.
Reducing hunger and malnutrition
The results of the SMART survey in Haiti showed some surprisingly positive results: a decrease in the prevalence of malnutrition levels in children aged 6-59 months, as compared to the malnutrition levels in the 2005-2006 Demographic and Health Survey. Stunting rates decreased to 23.4 per cent and acute and severe malnutrition decreased to 4.1 and 1 per cent, respectively. The prevalence of underweight children also decreased from 18 per cent in 2005-2006 to 10.6 per cent in 2012.
“These results show that we have been efficient, and when I say ‘we’, I mean all of us together, all the partners,” said Françoise Gruloos-Ackermans, UNICEF Representative in Haiti. “These results also call for continued attention and action to support the country in sustaining this success and moving towards MDG 1,” she said, referring to the Millennium Development Goal on reducing the number of people suffering from poverty and hunger.
(UNICEF) - By Suzanne Suh
PORT-AU-PRINCE – In March, slightly more than two years after Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake, UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP) supported the Ministry of Health’s national SMART nutrition survey.
SMART – which stands for Standardized Monitoring and Assessment of Relief and Transitions – is an improved survey method based on the two most vital, basic public health indicators to assess the severity of a humanitarian crisis: nutritional status of children under age 5 and mortality rate of the population.
These indicators are useful for assessing needs and prioritizing resources, as well as for monitoring the extent to which a relief system is meeting the needs of the population and, thus, the understanding overall impact of the relief response.
SMART was initiated mainly to improve the technical capacity of implementing partners to carry out, analyze, interpret and report on survey findings in a standardized manner to ensure reliability of nutrition and health data. SMART’s main goal is to make the survey process as easy as possible for field staff and as reliable as possible for decision-makers. It is recognized as a critical step in improving worldwide emergency assessment.
A long history of undernutrition
Even before the earthquake on January 12, 2010, rates of undernutrition among children in Haiti were among the highest in the Latin America and Caribbean region. In 2005, one out of every three children under five was stunted, or chronically undernourished; one out of 10 was wasted, or acutely malnourished; and six out of 10 were anaemic. In addition, about one fourth of all children were born with low birth weight.
Shortly after the earthquake, UNICEF and partners supported the Government of Haiti in providing earthquake-affected families with crucial humanitarian assistance. Emergency nutrition interventions were provided to prevent and treat child undernutrition and reduce the risk of child mortality. These included education and counselling on optimal infant and young child feeding practices, such as exclusive breastfeeding. UNICEF also provided micronutrient supplementation for mothers and children, including iron and folic acid supplements, multiple micronutrient powders and tablets, vitamin A supplements, and deworming tablets. UNICEF also supported the integrated management of severe acute malnutrition.
Since then, these interventions have been delivered across the country through 198 baby tents and baby-friendly centres – safe spaces where mothers can breastfeed, which also provide formula for orphans and children whose mothers were not able to breastfeed. These interventions have also been provided at 24 hospital and 290 community-based therapeutic feeding programs for children suffering from severe acute malnutrition, and at mass distribution campaigns. UNICEF has also supported basic maternal and child health services (in particular immunization) in health facilities, and has provided safe drinking water and hygiene and sanitation services in camps.
Reducing hunger and malnutrition
The results of the SMART survey in Haiti showed some surprisingly positive results: a decrease in the prevalence of malnutrition levels in children aged 6-59 months, as compared to the malnutrition levels in the 2005-2006 Demographic and Health Survey. Stunting rates decreased to 23.4 per cent and acute and severe malnutrition decreased to 4.1 and 1 per cent, respectively. The prevalence of underweight children also decreased from 18 per cent in 2005-2006 to 10.6 per cent in 2012.
“These results show that we have been efficient, and when I say ‘we’, I mean all of us together, all the partners,” said Françoise Gruloos-Ackermans, UNICEF Representative in Haiti. “These results also call for continued attention and action to support the country in sustaining this success and moving towards MDG 1,” she said, referring to the Millennium Development Goal on reducing the number of people suffering from poverty and hunger.
Friday, June 15, 2012
ARTICLE - ARCHITECTS DESIGNS HOSPITAL
CHICAGO ARCHITECT DESIGNS A BEACON FOR HEALTH CARE IN HAITI
(Chicago Tribune) - By Melissa Harris
Friendship with famed doctor leads to state-of-the-art teaching hospital for quake-ravaged nation
MIREBALAIS — Under a blinding Caribbean sun, far from the sleek Chicago residences she usually designs, architect Ann Clark saw well-laid plans turn to improvisation, yet again.
Overhead, a 2,850-pound ventilation system dangled from a broken crane, hovering over the roof of the national teaching hospital Clark had designed for this impoverished nation.
This was the third crane to arrive broken — not a victim of the twisty, mountainous climb to the site, but of Haiti's general dysfunction. Rarely does anything work properly here.
Before this project, Clark, a slender 51-year-old, mostly worked for Chicago's wealthy. She had never designed a health care facility, much less a hospital. Certainly not in a place where a ventilation system had to be rolled into place using a jury-rigged wood-frame dolly, or where concrete, the most basic of all building materials, was of such dubious quality that samples had to be toted to two countries for pressure-testing.
She also never imagined how this midcareer opportunity would challenge her, even sour her at times, but also inspire her to continue working in Haiti.
Her project was already under way when a 2010 earthquake devastated the country, killing tens of thousands of people. After that came a surprise request from government officials to transform the modestly planned facility into the most sophisticated hospital in the nation.
"I did think, 'Crap. I haven't built a hospital,'" Clark said. "But I realized that designing a hospital in the U.S. wouldn't necessarily help me design a hospital in Haiti."
Clark's journey to Haiti began almost two decades ago. While driving to work at her husband's West Loop architecture firm, she heard on National Public Radio that Paul Farmer, a college friend, had won the MacArthur Foundation's genius grant.
"I was working part time because I had a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old-ish," Clark said. "And I was like, 'Oh my God. Paul Farmer?' So I hand-wrote a letter. Not an email. A letter. 'Hey, I'm in Skokie with two toddlers at my ankles. And you're out saving the world.' I essentially told him I didn't feel very good about myself right then."
Farmer and Clark had corresponded via letter for years after graduating from Duke University in 1982. At some point, they stopped. By then, Clark was an architect but still something of a lost soul, unsure she had chosen the right career.
Farmer, however, had found his obsession: Haiti. While enrolled in Harvard Medical School, he began traveling there, doing everything he could to assign the same value to a Haitian patient as he would an American one, including the deployment of expensive drugs to combat tuberculosis and HIV.
After receiving Clark's letter, Farmer replied that she should never undervalue her role as a mother; she didn't know who her two boys would become. The note was sweet and reassuring. But it didn't change the fact that Clark was unsatisfied with her career.
From that car ride on, Clark paid attention to Farmer's work and sent small sums at Christmastime to his Boston-based charity, Partners in Health.
She joined her husband's architecture firm full time in the mid-'90s, forming Nicholas Clark Architects. While Farmer dedicated his life to the poor, Clark's career was dictated by the whims of the affluent.
Take the young Lincoln Park couple who hired her to design an addition. Without consulting Clark, the wife ordered a $1,200 stained-glass transom window. When it arrived, her clients disliked it and ordered Clark to refund them.
She refused. When the husband wouldn't let up, Clark mailed Partners in Health a $1,200 check with her client's name on the donor form. She told him that an entire house could be built in Haiti for the cost of that window and mailed him "Mountains Beyond Mountains," the 2003 book about Farmer by New Yorker writer Tracy Kidder.
Kidder's book had transformed Farmer from a country doctor into a celebrity, or as much of a celebrity as a doctor can be.
A benefit and a reunion
By 2008, Clark's most high-profile project was a well-received rehab of the Skokie Theatre. Whenever it seemed right, she told clients about Farmer and recommended "Mountains Beyond Mountains."
Then, a client with whom Clark had shared the gospel emailed her, asking if she was involved in an upcoming fundraiser in Chicago for Partners in Health.
Clark hadn't heard about it. She called the charity's headquarters and offered to host the event in her family's 3,100-square-foot Skokie home, which she had designed. In September 2008, about 130 people, including Farmer, mingled in Clark's glass-encased courtyard and spacious kitchen lined with an Italian marble backsplash.
After the house emptied, Farmer stayed behind to reminisce with Clark; her husband, Peter Nicholas; a Partners in Health doctor named David Walton; and a Partners in Health staff member. They sat on Clark's sofa, drinking wine in front of the fireplace, listening to Farmer tell stories about their days at Duke and of dining out with his new friend Bill Clinton.
Clark told Farmer. "Look, every year I send you guys money. What else can I do?"
Farmer replied: "Well come on down to Haiti and build some sh--, Ann."
First impression
The day after Christmas 2008, Walton, a Harvard-educated Farmer protege who grew up in Skokie, returned to Clark's home. The charity had never before hired an architect, and Walton knew its building practices desperately needed to be professionalized.
Walton asked Clark to design Partners in Health an 82-bed community hospital in Mirebalais, a 45-minute drive from Port-au-Prince. She accepted the job pro bono.
On Jan. 12, 2009, one year to the day before the earthquake, Clark flew to Haiti for the first time.
Partners in Health dispatched a driver and SUV to pick her up at the chaotic Port-au-Prince airport. After escaping the capital's open sewers, dust and trash, Clark rode past huts, one-room concrete-block homes, grazing goats, broken-down cars and gravel soccer fields.
The epicenter of Partners in Health's work is Cange, the site of Farmer's first clinic. Over decades the clinic had mushroomed into a maze of more than a dozen concrete and stone buildings perched on a steep hill wholly unsuitable for medical care. To get from the emergency room to the tuberculosis ward, for instance, one must ascend a steep ramp and dozens of stone and concrete steps.
Clark's first stop was Lacolline, then the newest of Partners in Health's clinics. It had been built with $640,000. Farmer didn't involve an architect until two years after the building opened — "just so we had documentation and could share the plans with others," he said.
Walking into the waiting area there, Clark saw women wearing dresses and men in dusty pants or jeans. Everyone's shoes were beaten up. Clark was immediately struck by how close the people sat next to each other in the waiting area and how sandwiched they were in line at the pharmacy window.
And people walked everywhere, even in rural areas. Clark marveled at how women balanced jugs of water and baskets of supplies atop their heads. She wondered how far these women had walked, and how far they had to go. And she noticed they were often smiling. Given their ragged clothing and signs of malnutrition — poverty unlike anything she had ever witnessed — she wondered what Haitians had to smile about.
"If anything, in a feeling sense, you learn to put up some kind of a shell or barrier, as a protective membrane," Clark said after her fifth trip. "The whole country is such an assault on your senses. Everything is in your face all the time. And if you don't do that, you're just going to get taken down."
Clark quickly gleaned that there would be no room for an architectural flourish in Mirebalais.
"I always get asked, 'So what's the architectural statement?'" Clark said. "The big architectural statement is called healing people."
Thinking it through
Back in Chicago, around the birch Parsons conference table at her West Loop office, Clark and Walton thought through health care in Haiti. It would be other people's jobs — plumbers, general contractors, electricians — to build the hospital; it would be Clark's job to think it.
How could they allow natural light into the wards, yet prevent people from being able to peer inside? How could they keep the rooms cool without air-conditioning? And how could they, in a country where electricity is notoriously unreliable, ensure the power wouldn't go out?
Partners in Health expected the hospital to draw patients from all over. Clark planned for a minimum of 250 Americans, enough space for 400 Haitians, in each of the hospital's larger waiting rooms. The most significant challenge was figuring out how to arrange the buildings so patients could move easily from one step to the next, from registration to the pharmacy. Signs wouldn't suffice. Walton estimates that 70 to 80 percent of the population of Haiti's Central Plateau is illiterate.
By August 2009, the Haitian Health Ministry had found Partners in Health a larger, 13-acre site in a rice field less than a mile down the road in Mirebalais. Clark flew to Haiti again.
There, she pulled on borrowed black rubber boots and, with Walton and a Japanese-American doctor, trekked through chest-high reeds and swampy rice paddies with a measuring wheel. By the end of the land survey, Clark's gray T-shirt was soaked in sweat.
For months, Walton had repeated, "Welcome to Haiti," every time Clark questioned why he wanted things done a certain way,a gentle reminder of the limitations there. By the end of the second trip, Clark said she was "ready to roll with the punches."
At home, things were not going as well.
The global recession was sending the architecture industry into a tailspin. For a while, Nicholas Clark, a five-person firm, made due with pre-recession assignments. But by mid-2009, the real estate crisis had killed new business. Rather than fire anyone, Nicholas and Clark cut everyone's hours to four days a week.
Not to mention that their marriage had been under strain for several years and was now breaking.
The earthquake
By January 2010, the Mirebalais hospital team was in place. Marjorie Benton, a former Partners in Health board member and Evanston resident, had signed on as the lead volunteer fundraiser. Walton would co-manage the project with Jim Ansara, a stocky, Boston construction magnate. Ansara had sold his company in 2006 and was struggling with retirement.
Clark, Walton and Ansara spent Jan. 12, 2010, reviewing electrical and engineering drawings at Ansara's Boston office.
That evening, a 7.0 earthquake knocked down Port-au-Prince.
Haiti's National Palace, its White House, folded in half, its four-sided dome pitching forward like Humpty Dumpty. The nursing school at Haiti's General Hospital collapsed during class, killing students and faculty.
Money began pouring into Partners in Health's headquarters, and Haiti's Ministry of Health saw an opportunity in Mirebalais.
"You need to set your sights higher," the health minister told Farmer, according to his book "Haiti After the Earthquake." "The hospital needs to be a place that can train young doctors and nurses. ... It needs to be bigger, many times bigger, than what we agreed upon."
Ansara worried the project had grown too big for Clark. In February 2010, he called her to say he wanted to hire the Boston office of Chicago-based Perkins+Will, the world's second-largest architecture firm by revenue that year, to assist pro bono. Ansara flew Clark and her then-26-year-old designer, Jacob Wahler, to Boston for a brainstorming session.
Clark, no doubt, felt threatened.
"It wasn't a particularly comfortable meeting," Ansara said. "It became fairly territorial pretty quickly."
Still hopeful a partnership could form, Ansara told Clark and Perkins+Will's Dennis Kaiser to collaborate on a design scheme. Ansara asked to see their plan when he returned from Haiti. Ten days later, the two architects hadn't reached an agreement, and Clark was still tending to her previous plan.
Farmer, meanwhile, said he had been "cajoling, guilt-tripping, begging and employing all of the usual Catholic stratagems" to get the project moving. Ansara felt the pressure. Over the phone, Ansara ordered Clark and Kaiser to go to lunch, come back and work out their differences.
"The marriage between Ann and Perkins+Will was not clicking or working," Ansara said. "The cultures, the sizes of the firms, everything was at opposite ends of the spectrum. That was one issue. The other issue is we had to sort of start all over again with Perkins+Will and negotiate what was possible in Haiti and what wasn't possible."
On that point, Clark's inexperience proved an advantage — she couldn't tell Ansara or Walton, "That's not how it's done," or, "You shouldn't do that," because she didn't know how things should be done. And she had seen enough of Haiti to know that monumental ideas couldn't be executed there. The equipment and skilled labor didn't exist.
"They didn't have to reprogram me," Clark said. "I knew this couldn't be U.S. hospital redux."
That afternoon Ansara called Perkins+Will. He wanted to find a support role for the firm but made it clear Clark would lead the design. And with that, Perkins+Will departed.
Getting paid
Clark would need to quickly generate about 100 drawings plus revisions and clarifying sketches. She believed she could do it, but not for free. She asked Ansara to pay her to finish the project at 40 percent her normal rate.
Ansara agreed. In fact, he said it was his idea.
"She didn't actually ask," he said. "I insisted on it. I knew what she was getting into, and what she had initially committed to. ... Initially she was reluctant because she had made a commitment to Paul Farmer to donate her services."
Clark doesn't remember it that way. In fact, she said she has had an epiphany about pro bono work: She won't do it anymore.
"Because I can't live," she said. "I'm now realizing I undermine my own value by doing that."
Clark's new model is to help charities raise the money to pay for their building projects, including a reduced fee for her design services.
"I really think architects are the worst businesspeople in the world because they will do business for free ad nauseam," Clark said. "There are competitions nobody gets paid for. There are requests for proposals that nobody gets paid for. In a small office, I can't really afford to do that."
During spring 2010, Nicholas Clark Architects hired a temporary employee, then dedicated everyone at the firm, except Nicholas, to the hospital. Wahler served as the point man.
More than architecture
Nicholas Clark's contract with Partners in Health states that from January 2009 to February 2010, the firm donated 570 hours of pro bono design work. Ann Clark estimated the firm billed an additional 3,000 hours to finish the job.
Clark would spend that time pondering the substantial, such as the composition of the walls in the radiology room, to the unsubstantial, such as where a donated video art installation would hang.
Drawings continued to be updated, but by August 2010, Wahler had transmitted the bulk of them. The most difficult challenge — building the 205,000-square foot, 320-bed facility — would fall to Ansara and Walton.
If this were a Chicago hospital, Clark would visit the construction site weekly to answer questions and inspect the work. But Clark couldn't afford to fly to Haiti regularly, nor could Partners in Health afford to pay her to do so. So Ansara adopted that role, and Clark contributed in other ways.
Through Rita Knorr, the same client who provided the heads-up about the 2008 fundraiser, Clark secured pro-bono landscape design work. Then through a relationship with a tile showroom in Chicago, called The Fine Line, Clark secured 80,000 square feet of Chinese porcelain tile and 28,000 square feet of Fiandre Italian tile at steep discounts.
Of the hospital's $23 million budget, about $7 million was covered with in-kind donations. Walton doesn't know if Partners in Health could replicate such generosity now that international interest in Haiti has waned.
"Were the timing different, we would have had much more difficulty finding this degree of enthusiasm for the hospital and for Haiti in general," Walton said.
A new career
Clark's life has changed significantly since construction began. She and her husband are in the process of divorcing. They also dissolved Nicholas Clark Architects and sold their Skokie home.
Clark has launched her own firm, Ann Clark Architects, and hired a 30-something fresh from his licensing exams to assist her.
But she still wakes up thinking about Haiti. The hospital won her a new client: Haiti Sustainable Education, a charity trying to build a boarding school in Grand Bois, a remote, mountainous area two miles from the Dominican Republic border.
Although that site is just 37 miles from Port-au-Prince, it took Clark four hours and 42 minutes to reach. The trip is like going white-water rafting. After nearly getting carsick along the way, Clark turned to her boyfriend, Chicago cardiologist Samuel Dudley, who was in the back seat, and declared, "Mirebalais is for wussies."
In retrospect, she said, the hospital didn't cost her anything. Instead, it afforded her very much.
"It offered me an opportunity to move in a different direction with architecture, which is something that I hoped to do but just didn't know how," she said. "While it is difficult, I relish the idea of doing more work in Haiti or in places like Haiti where buildings are needed and where good construction can improve peoples' lives."
The Mirebalais hospital, scheduled to open this fall, is Haiti's best example of this. It is white and beautiful.
"It's big — just the scale of it, it's so big," Wahler said. He snapped a photo of the hospital's iron gates, which are pinned with Haitian metal drum art.
Clark's plane was delayed. She arrived after lunch, wearing charcoal slacks and a white linen shirt, her long graying hair pulled back in a clip. Her first reaction was to look down at the floor, stomp her foot and shout: "A buck a foot! A buck a foot!" Then she burst into her huge, squawking laugh, thrilled at how cheaply she had acquired the elegant Italian tile.
Clark's next reaction was a testament to Walton and Ansara. The quality of the construction awed her. "Wow," she said, as she walked through the lobby, running her hand along one wall.
When Clark walked in the emergency room, she told Wahler with pride, "This is an incredibly American-feeling room." And when she walked into the labor and delivery ward, she said: "There is no artificial light on right now and look at how it feels in here. It's healing and soothing for people."
For a country that has experienced so much suffering, that was always her goal.
Epilogue
About six months after the earthquake, Clark was doing her morning yoga routine at her Skokie home when her eyes locked on a shoe box. Inside, she found letters, including this long-forgotten one, dated March 15, 1989, the year after she completed architecture school.
Well, Ann, when we last spoke you were teetering between business and art. If business won out, would you please help me to build a hospital for the poor in Haiti? If you stayed with art, would you please send us a painting to cheer up our patients? Seriously, drop a line.
Yours, Paul Farmer
(Chicago Tribune) - By Melissa Harris
Friendship with famed doctor leads to state-of-the-art teaching hospital for quake-ravaged nation
MIREBALAIS — Under a blinding Caribbean sun, far from the sleek Chicago residences she usually designs, architect Ann Clark saw well-laid plans turn to improvisation, yet again.
Overhead, a 2,850-pound ventilation system dangled from a broken crane, hovering over the roof of the national teaching hospital Clark had designed for this impoverished nation.
This was the third crane to arrive broken — not a victim of the twisty, mountainous climb to the site, but of Haiti's general dysfunction. Rarely does anything work properly here.
Before this project, Clark, a slender 51-year-old, mostly worked for Chicago's wealthy. She had never designed a health care facility, much less a hospital. Certainly not in a place where a ventilation system had to be rolled into place using a jury-rigged wood-frame dolly, or where concrete, the most basic of all building materials, was of such dubious quality that samples had to be toted to two countries for pressure-testing.
She also never imagined how this midcareer opportunity would challenge her, even sour her at times, but also inspire her to continue working in Haiti.
Her project was already under way when a 2010 earthquake devastated the country, killing tens of thousands of people. After that came a surprise request from government officials to transform the modestly planned facility into the most sophisticated hospital in the nation.
"I did think, 'Crap. I haven't built a hospital,'" Clark said. "But I realized that designing a hospital in the U.S. wouldn't necessarily help me design a hospital in Haiti."
Clark's journey to Haiti began almost two decades ago. While driving to work at her husband's West Loop architecture firm, she heard on National Public Radio that Paul Farmer, a college friend, had won the MacArthur Foundation's genius grant.
"I was working part time because I had a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old-ish," Clark said. "And I was like, 'Oh my God. Paul Farmer?' So I hand-wrote a letter. Not an email. A letter. 'Hey, I'm in Skokie with two toddlers at my ankles. And you're out saving the world.' I essentially told him I didn't feel very good about myself right then."
Farmer and Clark had corresponded via letter for years after graduating from Duke University in 1982. At some point, they stopped. By then, Clark was an architect but still something of a lost soul, unsure she had chosen the right career.
Farmer, however, had found his obsession: Haiti. While enrolled in Harvard Medical School, he began traveling there, doing everything he could to assign the same value to a Haitian patient as he would an American one, including the deployment of expensive drugs to combat tuberculosis and HIV.
After receiving Clark's letter, Farmer replied that she should never undervalue her role as a mother; she didn't know who her two boys would become. The note was sweet and reassuring. But it didn't change the fact that Clark was unsatisfied with her career.
From that car ride on, Clark paid attention to Farmer's work and sent small sums at Christmastime to his Boston-based charity, Partners in Health.
She joined her husband's architecture firm full time in the mid-'90s, forming Nicholas Clark Architects. While Farmer dedicated his life to the poor, Clark's career was dictated by the whims of the affluent.
Take the young Lincoln Park couple who hired her to design an addition. Without consulting Clark, the wife ordered a $1,200 stained-glass transom window. When it arrived, her clients disliked it and ordered Clark to refund them.
She refused. When the husband wouldn't let up, Clark mailed Partners in Health a $1,200 check with her client's name on the donor form. She told him that an entire house could be built in Haiti for the cost of that window and mailed him "Mountains Beyond Mountains," the 2003 book about Farmer by New Yorker writer Tracy Kidder.
Kidder's book had transformed Farmer from a country doctor into a celebrity, or as much of a celebrity as a doctor can be.
A benefit and a reunion
By 2008, Clark's most high-profile project was a well-received rehab of the Skokie Theatre. Whenever it seemed right, she told clients about Farmer and recommended "Mountains Beyond Mountains."
Then, a client with whom Clark had shared the gospel emailed her, asking if she was involved in an upcoming fundraiser in Chicago for Partners in Health.
Clark hadn't heard about it. She called the charity's headquarters and offered to host the event in her family's 3,100-square-foot Skokie home, which she had designed. In September 2008, about 130 people, including Farmer, mingled in Clark's glass-encased courtyard and spacious kitchen lined with an Italian marble backsplash.
After the house emptied, Farmer stayed behind to reminisce with Clark; her husband, Peter Nicholas; a Partners in Health doctor named David Walton; and a Partners in Health staff member. They sat on Clark's sofa, drinking wine in front of the fireplace, listening to Farmer tell stories about their days at Duke and of dining out with his new friend Bill Clinton.
Clark told Farmer. "Look, every year I send you guys money. What else can I do?"
Farmer replied: "Well come on down to Haiti and build some sh--, Ann."
First impression
The day after Christmas 2008, Walton, a Harvard-educated Farmer protege who grew up in Skokie, returned to Clark's home. The charity had never before hired an architect, and Walton knew its building practices desperately needed to be professionalized.
Walton asked Clark to design Partners in Health an 82-bed community hospital in Mirebalais, a 45-minute drive from Port-au-Prince. She accepted the job pro bono.
On Jan. 12, 2009, one year to the day before the earthquake, Clark flew to Haiti for the first time.
Partners in Health dispatched a driver and SUV to pick her up at the chaotic Port-au-Prince airport. After escaping the capital's open sewers, dust and trash, Clark rode past huts, one-room concrete-block homes, grazing goats, broken-down cars and gravel soccer fields.
The epicenter of Partners in Health's work is Cange, the site of Farmer's first clinic. Over decades the clinic had mushroomed into a maze of more than a dozen concrete and stone buildings perched on a steep hill wholly unsuitable for medical care. To get from the emergency room to the tuberculosis ward, for instance, one must ascend a steep ramp and dozens of stone and concrete steps.
Clark's first stop was Lacolline, then the newest of Partners in Health's clinics. It had been built with $640,000. Farmer didn't involve an architect until two years after the building opened — "just so we had documentation and could share the plans with others," he said.
Walking into the waiting area there, Clark saw women wearing dresses and men in dusty pants or jeans. Everyone's shoes were beaten up. Clark was immediately struck by how close the people sat next to each other in the waiting area and how sandwiched they were in line at the pharmacy window.
And people walked everywhere, even in rural areas. Clark marveled at how women balanced jugs of water and baskets of supplies atop their heads. She wondered how far these women had walked, and how far they had to go. And she noticed they were often smiling. Given their ragged clothing and signs of malnutrition — poverty unlike anything she had ever witnessed — she wondered what Haitians had to smile about.
"If anything, in a feeling sense, you learn to put up some kind of a shell or barrier, as a protective membrane," Clark said after her fifth trip. "The whole country is such an assault on your senses. Everything is in your face all the time. And if you don't do that, you're just going to get taken down."
Clark quickly gleaned that there would be no room for an architectural flourish in Mirebalais.
"I always get asked, 'So what's the architectural statement?'" Clark said. "The big architectural statement is called healing people."
Thinking it through
Back in Chicago, around the birch Parsons conference table at her West Loop office, Clark and Walton thought through health care in Haiti. It would be other people's jobs — plumbers, general contractors, electricians — to build the hospital; it would be Clark's job to think it.
How could they allow natural light into the wards, yet prevent people from being able to peer inside? How could they keep the rooms cool without air-conditioning? And how could they, in a country where electricity is notoriously unreliable, ensure the power wouldn't go out?
Partners in Health expected the hospital to draw patients from all over. Clark planned for a minimum of 250 Americans, enough space for 400 Haitians, in each of the hospital's larger waiting rooms. The most significant challenge was figuring out how to arrange the buildings so patients could move easily from one step to the next, from registration to the pharmacy. Signs wouldn't suffice. Walton estimates that 70 to 80 percent of the population of Haiti's Central Plateau is illiterate.
By August 2009, the Haitian Health Ministry had found Partners in Health a larger, 13-acre site in a rice field less than a mile down the road in Mirebalais. Clark flew to Haiti again.
There, she pulled on borrowed black rubber boots and, with Walton and a Japanese-American doctor, trekked through chest-high reeds and swampy rice paddies with a measuring wheel. By the end of the land survey, Clark's gray T-shirt was soaked in sweat.
For months, Walton had repeated, "Welcome to Haiti," every time Clark questioned why he wanted things done a certain way,a gentle reminder of the limitations there. By the end of the second trip, Clark said she was "ready to roll with the punches."
At home, things were not going as well.
The global recession was sending the architecture industry into a tailspin. For a while, Nicholas Clark, a five-person firm, made due with pre-recession assignments. But by mid-2009, the real estate crisis had killed new business. Rather than fire anyone, Nicholas and Clark cut everyone's hours to four days a week.
Not to mention that their marriage had been under strain for several years and was now breaking.
The earthquake
By January 2010, the Mirebalais hospital team was in place. Marjorie Benton, a former Partners in Health board member and Evanston resident, had signed on as the lead volunteer fundraiser. Walton would co-manage the project with Jim Ansara, a stocky, Boston construction magnate. Ansara had sold his company in 2006 and was struggling with retirement.
Clark, Walton and Ansara spent Jan. 12, 2010, reviewing electrical and engineering drawings at Ansara's Boston office.
That evening, a 7.0 earthquake knocked down Port-au-Prince.
Haiti's National Palace, its White House, folded in half, its four-sided dome pitching forward like Humpty Dumpty. The nursing school at Haiti's General Hospital collapsed during class, killing students and faculty.
Money began pouring into Partners in Health's headquarters, and Haiti's Ministry of Health saw an opportunity in Mirebalais.
"You need to set your sights higher," the health minister told Farmer, according to his book "Haiti After the Earthquake." "The hospital needs to be a place that can train young doctors and nurses. ... It needs to be bigger, many times bigger, than what we agreed upon."
Ansara worried the project had grown too big for Clark. In February 2010, he called her to say he wanted to hire the Boston office of Chicago-based Perkins+Will, the world's second-largest architecture firm by revenue that year, to assist pro bono. Ansara flew Clark and her then-26-year-old designer, Jacob Wahler, to Boston for a brainstorming session.
Clark, no doubt, felt threatened.
"It wasn't a particularly comfortable meeting," Ansara said. "It became fairly territorial pretty quickly."
Still hopeful a partnership could form, Ansara told Clark and Perkins+Will's Dennis Kaiser to collaborate on a design scheme. Ansara asked to see their plan when he returned from Haiti. Ten days later, the two architects hadn't reached an agreement, and Clark was still tending to her previous plan.
Farmer, meanwhile, said he had been "cajoling, guilt-tripping, begging and employing all of the usual Catholic stratagems" to get the project moving. Ansara felt the pressure. Over the phone, Ansara ordered Clark and Kaiser to go to lunch, come back and work out their differences.
"The marriage between Ann and Perkins+Will was not clicking or working," Ansara said. "The cultures, the sizes of the firms, everything was at opposite ends of the spectrum. That was one issue. The other issue is we had to sort of start all over again with Perkins+Will and negotiate what was possible in Haiti and what wasn't possible."
On that point, Clark's inexperience proved an advantage — she couldn't tell Ansara or Walton, "That's not how it's done," or, "You shouldn't do that," because she didn't know how things should be done. And she had seen enough of Haiti to know that monumental ideas couldn't be executed there. The equipment and skilled labor didn't exist.
"They didn't have to reprogram me," Clark said. "I knew this couldn't be U.S. hospital redux."
That afternoon Ansara called Perkins+Will. He wanted to find a support role for the firm but made it clear Clark would lead the design. And with that, Perkins+Will departed.
Getting paid
Clark would need to quickly generate about 100 drawings plus revisions and clarifying sketches. She believed she could do it, but not for free. She asked Ansara to pay her to finish the project at 40 percent her normal rate.
Ansara agreed. In fact, he said it was his idea.
"She didn't actually ask," he said. "I insisted on it. I knew what she was getting into, and what she had initially committed to. ... Initially she was reluctant because she had made a commitment to Paul Farmer to donate her services."
Clark doesn't remember it that way. In fact, she said she has had an epiphany about pro bono work: She won't do it anymore.
"Because I can't live," she said. "I'm now realizing I undermine my own value by doing that."
Clark's new model is to help charities raise the money to pay for their building projects, including a reduced fee for her design services.
"I really think architects are the worst businesspeople in the world because they will do business for free ad nauseam," Clark said. "There are competitions nobody gets paid for. There are requests for proposals that nobody gets paid for. In a small office, I can't really afford to do that."
During spring 2010, Nicholas Clark Architects hired a temporary employee, then dedicated everyone at the firm, except Nicholas, to the hospital. Wahler served as the point man.
More than architecture
Nicholas Clark's contract with Partners in Health states that from January 2009 to February 2010, the firm donated 570 hours of pro bono design work. Ann Clark estimated the firm billed an additional 3,000 hours to finish the job.
Clark would spend that time pondering the substantial, such as the composition of the walls in the radiology room, to the unsubstantial, such as where a donated video art installation would hang.
Drawings continued to be updated, but by August 2010, Wahler had transmitted the bulk of them. The most difficult challenge — building the 205,000-square foot, 320-bed facility — would fall to Ansara and Walton.
If this were a Chicago hospital, Clark would visit the construction site weekly to answer questions and inspect the work. But Clark couldn't afford to fly to Haiti regularly, nor could Partners in Health afford to pay her to do so. So Ansara adopted that role, and Clark contributed in other ways.
Through Rita Knorr, the same client who provided the heads-up about the 2008 fundraiser, Clark secured pro-bono landscape design work. Then through a relationship with a tile showroom in Chicago, called The Fine Line, Clark secured 80,000 square feet of Chinese porcelain tile and 28,000 square feet of Fiandre Italian tile at steep discounts.
Of the hospital's $23 million budget, about $7 million was covered with in-kind donations. Walton doesn't know if Partners in Health could replicate such generosity now that international interest in Haiti has waned.
"Were the timing different, we would have had much more difficulty finding this degree of enthusiasm for the hospital and for Haiti in general," Walton said.
A new career
Clark's life has changed significantly since construction began. She and her husband are in the process of divorcing. They also dissolved Nicholas Clark Architects and sold their Skokie home.
Clark has launched her own firm, Ann Clark Architects, and hired a 30-something fresh from his licensing exams to assist her.
But she still wakes up thinking about Haiti. The hospital won her a new client: Haiti Sustainable Education, a charity trying to build a boarding school in Grand Bois, a remote, mountainous area two miles from the Dominican Republic border.
Although that site is just 37 miles from Port-au-Prince, it took Clark four hours and 42 minutes to reach. The trip is like going white-water rafting. After nearly getting carsick along the way, Clark turned to her boyfriend, Chicago cardiologist Samuel Dudley, who was in the back seat, and declared, "Mirebalais is for wussies."
In retrospect, she said, the hospital didn't cost her anything. Instead, it afforded her very much.
"It offered me an opportunity to move in a different direction with architecture, which is something that I hoped to do but just didn't know how," she said. "While it is difficult, I relish the idea of doing more work in Haiti or in places like Haiti where buildings are needed and where good construction can improve peoples' lives."
The Mirebalais hospital, scheduled to open this fall, is Haiti's best example of this. It is white and beautiful.
"It's big — just the scale of it, it's so big," Wahler said. He snapped a photo of the hospital's iron gates, which are pinned with Haitian metal drum art.
Clark's plane was delayed. She arrived after lunch, wearing charcoal slacks and a white linen shirt, her long graying hair pulled back in a clip. Her first reaction was to look down at the floor, stomp her foot and shout: "A buck a foot! A buck a foot!" Then she burst into her huge, squawking laugh, thrilled at how cheaply she had acquired the elegant Italian tile.
Clark's next reaction was a testament to Walton and Ansara. The quality of the construction awed her. "Wow," she said, as she walked through the lobby, running her hand along one wall.
When Clark walked in the emergency room, she told Wahler with pride, "This is an incredibly American-feeling room." And when she walked into the labor and delivery ward, she said: "There is no artificial light on right now and look at how it feels in here. It's healing and soothing for people."
For a country that has experienced so much suffering, that was always her goal.
Epilogue
About six months after the earthquake, Clark was doing her morning yoga routine at her Skokie home when her eyes locked on a shoe box. Inside, she found letters, including this long-forgotten one, dated March 15, 1989, the year after she completed architecture school.
Well, Ann, when we last spoke you were teetering between business and art. If business won out, would you please help me to build a hospital for the poor in Haiti? If you stayed with art, would you please send us a painting to cheer up our patients? Seriously, drop a line.
Yours, Paul Farmer
Monday, June 11, 2012
ARTICLE - NOTRE DAME HOSPITAL STRIKE
PARALYSIS AT THE NOTRE DAME HOSPITAL OF PETIT-GOAVE
(Haiti Libre) -
This Sunday, June 10, Dr. Gustave Jean François, acting Director of the Hospital of Petit-Goâve, has informed, during a press conference, of the paralysis of the Hospital of reference for the Goâvienne region. Doctors in social service and nurses, have decided to observe a work stoppage in protest, against the physical assault of which a nurse was the victim, in the performance of his duties, after a group of individuals from the popular neighborhood "Nan Percin", broke into a room of the hospital to pursue a wounded boy, Dimitri Lindor, who had just received several blows in a fight...
"For now, only a core group at emergency works," declared the Director. While condemning this act of aggression, he plans to take further security measures, and has sought the cooperation of the local population. He also asked the central authorities, to increase the number of doctors at the level of the hospital, and suggested that there be organized, with members of civil society and notables of the city, a forum on the crisis that affects this hospital for many months...
This work stoppage further exacerbates the situation at the hospital which was already facing a lack of human resources, "The main problem at Hospital Notre-Dame of Petit-Goâve is and remains, a lack of technical people, which almost does not exist. If I present the list of staff, you will see a high number of employees in three major categories, but in reality there are only 11 doctors in social service and a nurse [...] We need specialized doctors: pediatricians, surgeons, orthopedists, internists, gynecologists that's why I ask the Ministry of Health to increase the technical staff of the hospital," explained Dr. Jean François.
(Haiti Libre) -
This Sunday, June 10, Dr. Gustave Jean François, acting Director of the Hospital of Petit-Goâve, has informed, during a press conference, of the paralysis of the Hospital of reference for the Goâvienne region. Doctors in social service and nurses, have decided to observe a work stoppage in protest, against the physical assault of which a nurse was the victim, in the performance of his duties, after a group of individuals from the popular neighborhood "Nan Percin", broke into a room of the hospital to pursue a wounded boy, Dimitri Lindor, who had just received several blows in a fight...
"For now, only a core group at emergency works," declared the Director. While condemning this act of aggression, he plans to take further security measures, and has sought the cooperation of the local population. He also asked the central authorities, to increase the number of doctors at the level of the hospital, and suggested that there be organized, with members of civil society and notables of the city, a forum on the crisis that affects this hospital for many months...
This work stoppage further exacerbates the situation at the hospital which was already facing a lack of human resources, "The main problem at Hospital Notre-Dame of Petit-Goâve is and remains, a lack of technical people, which almost does not exist. If I present the list of staff, you will see a high number of employees in three major categories, but in reality there are only 11 doctors in social service and a nurse [...] We need specialized doctors: pediatricians, surgeons, orthopedists, internists, gynecologists that's why I ask the Ministry of Health to increase the technical staff of the hospital," explained Dr. Jean François.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
ARTICLE - MENTAL HEALTH CARE DEPLORABLE
DEPLORABLE SITUATION IN THE AREA OF MENTAL HEALTH
(Haiti Libre) -
Antonal Mortimé, the Executive Secretary of the Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organizations (POHOH) regrets that the problem of mental health in Haiti is neglected, not to say ignored in our society.
"Mental illness is a phenomenon that is not quite accepted or tolerated by many people of the Haitian population. It constitutes a category of diseases for which today we continue to have value judgments and discriminatory attitudes. There is a preponderance of physical health at the expense of mental health [...]
Having psychological problems in Haiti, is being exposed to abandonment, and isolation, as if there was no hope. Indeed, as soon as a person suffers from a mental disorder, the first explanation is mostly supernatural. For some, the patient is possessed [...] After having tried elsewhere without finding solutions, these mentally ill people are abandoned in the streets, given the lack of a psychiatric center to accommodate them. Note also, that other patients, by lack of attention by their families, fled without nobody searching for them [...]
A report published in 2011 by the Assessment Instrument for Mental Health System (AIMS), developed by the World Health Organization (WHO), which is intended to compile basic data for assessing the Mental Health System, has presented the number of professionals working in the field of mental health in Haiti.
The country has 27 Psychiatrists (0.28 psychiatrist per 100,000 inhabitants). The majority, 70% (19) is engaged exclusively in private or NGO, 30% (8) working in public and private structures; 14 physicians not specialized in psychiatry {0.14 per 100,000 population), 36 nurses (0.38 per 100,000) 194 Psychologists (2 per 100,000 population), 82 Social Workers (0.86 per 100,000 population) and 1 OT-Neurologist. In reading this data, we can only note that there is an acute shortage of professionals in this field in Haiti.
POHDH believes that the situation of the mentally ill is inconceivable in this 21st century marked by the advancement of human rights in some countries and the progress of certain scientific disciplines such as psychology arriving to explain the evolution of certain mental disorders and thereby , propose some methods to solve or cope with some problems.
POHDH reminds that there are in Haiti two public neuro-psychiatric institutions: Défilée Hospital of Beudet, and the University Hospital Mars and Kline Centre. According to the report of the AIMS / WHO, these two institutions are in a state of disrepair and there is no availability of community follow-up treatment.
Recall that on October 10, during the International Day of Mental Health, the government, through the First Lady Sophia Martelly, took the initiative to launch operation "Tèt poze, Kè poze", which consisted of identifying the mentally ill in the streets for a support at the Beudet Centre. A toll-free number, 177, was made available to the public to report the presence of patients across the country. The government also promised to strengthen existing centers and to create new psychiatric centers.
However, the presence of the mentally ill in the streets persists in the streets, and so far the 177 number does not work. We still have not noticed the construction of other psychiatric centers in the country, or the strengthening of those existing.
To this end, POHDH believes imperative to address these recommendations to the concerned authorities, asking them:
Pass laws that define and grant clearly, special rights to the mentally ill;
Educate and sensitize families, groups and communities, in the supervision of the mentally ill;
Create many more centers and psychiatric hospitals in all departments of the country;
Strengthen the University Hospital Mars and Kline Centre and the Défilée Centre of Beudet, which are in the downtown of Port-au-Prince and Croix-des-Bouquets respectively;
Develop a mental health policy to recover the mentally ill circulating in the streets;
Train more mental health professionals who must integrate into the Public Hospitals; Enforce laws preventing discrimination vis-à-vis the mentally ill, according to art. 5 of the United Nations Convention on Disability Rights, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its Article 2.
(Haiti Libre) -
Antonal Mortimé, the Executive Secretary of the Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organizations (POHOH) regrets that the problem of mental health in Haiti is neglected, not to say ignored in our society.
"Mental illness is a phenomenon that is not quite accepted or tolerated by many people of the Haitian population. It constitutes a category of diseases for which today we continue to have value judgments and discriminatory attitudes. There is a preponderance of physical health at the expense of mental health [...]
Having psychological problems in Haiti, is being exposed to abandonment, and isolation, as if there was no hope. Indeed, as soon as a person suffers from a mental disorder, the first explanation is mostly supernatural. For some, the patient is possessed [...] After having tried elsewhere without finding solutions, these mentally ill people are abandoned in the streets, given the lack of a psychiatric center to accommodate them. Note also, that other patients, by lack of attention by their families, fled without nobody searching for them [...]
A report published in 2011 by the Assessment Instrument for Mental Health System (AIMS), developed by the World Health Organization (WHO), which is intended to compile basic data for assessing the Mental Health System, has presented the number of professionals working in the field of mental health in Haiti.
The country has 27 Psychiatrists (0.28 psychiatrist per 100,000 inhabitants). The majority, 70% (19) is engaged exclusively in private or NGO, 30% (8) working in public and private structures; 14 physicians not specialized in psychiatry {0.14 per 100,000 population), 36 nurses (0.38 per 100,000) 194 Psychologists (2 per 100,000 population), 82 Social Workers (0.86 per 100,000 population) and 1 OT-Neurologist. In reading this data, we can only note that there is an acute shortage of professionals in this field in Haiti.
POHDH believes that the situation of the mentally ill is inconceivable in this 21st century marked by the advancement of human rights in some countries and the progress of certain scientific disciplines such as psychology arriving to explain the evolution of certain mental disorders and thereby , propose some methods to solve or cope with some problems.
POHDH reminds that there are in Haiti two public neuro-psychiatric institutions: Défilée Hospital of Beudet, and the University Hospital Mars and Kline Centre. According to the report of the AIMS / WHO, these two institutions are in a state of disrepair and there is no availability of community follow-up treatment.
Recall that on October 10, during the International Day of Mental Health, the government, through the First Lady Sophia Martelly, took the initiative to launch operation "Tèt poze, Kè poze", which consisted of identifying the mentally ill in the streets for a support at the Beudet Centre. A toll-free number, 177, was made available to the public to report the presence of patients across the country. The government also promised to strengthen existing centers and to create new psychiatric centers.
However, the presence of the mentally ill in the streets persists in the streets, and so far the 177 number does not work. We still have not noticed the construction of other psychiatric centers in the country, or the strengthening of those existing.
To this end, POHDH believes imperative to address these recommendations to the concerned authorities, asking them:
Pass laws that define and grant clearly, special rights to the mentally ill;
Educate and sensitize families, groups and communities, in the supervision of the mentally ill;
Create many more centers and psychiatric hospitals in all departments of the country;
Strengthen the University Hospital Mars and Kline Centre and the Défilée Centre of Beudet, which are in the downtown of Port-au-Prince and Croix-des-Bouquets respectively;
Develop a mental health policy to recover the mentally ill circulating in the streets;
Train more mental health professionals who must integrate into the Public Hospitals; Enforce laws preventing discrimination vis-à-vis the mentally ill, according to art. 5 of the United Nations Convention on Disability Rights, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its Article 2.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
ARTICLE - PINK CARD - "KONBIT SOLIDARITE"
LAUNCH OF THE SOCIAL SECURITY PINK CARD "KONBIT SOLIDARITE"
(Haiti Libre) -
President Michel Martelly, proceeded, Monday, May 28, to the inauguration of the new physiotherapy department at OFATMA Hospital (Office of Insurance Work Accident, Sickness and Maternity) in Cité Militaire, officially launched as the Pink Card, "Konbit Solidarity", a free health insurance card, valid for one year, which will facilitate the access for Haitian families to quality health care.
"It is the appropriate time to recall that in the mandate given to OFATMA in 1967, health insurance in favor of working men and women, for workers of the formal sector was planned, but was ignored for 45 years [...] I'm here to send another signal of hope to the people. We are here this morning to launch the health insurance card, for parents, children, boys and girls. It is not normal for someone who is ill, can not go to the doctor because the treatments are too expensive. It is not normal [...] The health insurance card will be distributed to 400 workers and their families, so about 2,000 people will benefit from it. It will be valid for one year, and recipients will have it for free We are working on this card to understand how much it will cost the State, to be able to put a price on it in the future. We are in the experimental phase [...] we chose to work with people who work in the handling of luggage at the airport [300 people of the 'Red Caps' service], and we will add 100 people from the informal sector; merchants, and various workers with their families. This first group will serve as a pilot group, which means that we will do a test to see how it will work. Once OFATMA has tested the Pink Card, and it works the way we want it to; we can give this card to a department, then two, three... until we have the card at a national level [...]"
The Health Card holders will benefit from preventive and curative care in dermatology, surgery/trauma, Obstetrics/Gynecology, ENT, ophthalmology, internal medicine and pediatrics at the following hospitals :
Hopital Communauté Haïtienne at Frères;
Hopital OFATMA in Cité Militaire;
Hopital Diquini in Carrefour;
Hopital Fermathe in Kenscoff;
Hopital La Paix on Delmas 33.
"The Health Card, will address a special need for an individual, in health for households, fathers with lower average incomes, and will enable them to meet the health requirements," said Mr. Ronsard St-Cyr, the Minister of Social Affairs, who congratulated the President Martelly for his commitment to the Haitian people.
Over 60,000 consultations are carried out annually at the outpatient clinic of OFATMA, indicated Charles Jean Jacques, the General Manager of this hospital, announcing the presence soon of OFATMA in Caracol.
"I appreciate that OFATMA works to, not only to fulfill its obligations to those whose it is directly responsible, but that it opens up to the society in general, to help solve serious social problems. I am mindful of its presence in the North and its plans to set up hospitals in other departments of the country. I want to publicly give my support to OFATMA on behalf of the Haitian people," declared the Head of State; adding that, "Gradually, we are moving forward. The objective is to enable all Haitians to find health care when they are sick. Like the free education program where we are working to send all children to school, we are fighting so that every son of Haiti may fully enjoy their right to health, by the end of my term."
President Martelly, reiterated once again that he will never cease to take specific action designed to improve the living conditions of the population.
(Haiti Libre) -
President Michel Martelly, proceeded, Monday, May 28, to the inauguration of the new physiotherapy department at OFATMA Hospital (Office of Insurance Work Accident, Sickness and Maternity) in Cité Militaire, officially launched as the Pink Card, "Konbit Solidarity", a free health insurance card, valid for one year, which will facilitate the access for Haitian families to quality health care.
"It is the appropriate time to recall that in the mandate given to OFATMA in 1967, health insurance in favor of working men and women, for workers of the formal sector was planned, but was ignored for 45 years [...] I'm here to send another signal of hope to the people. We are here this morning to launch the health insurance card, for parents, children, boys and girls. It is not normal for someone who is ill, can not go to the doctor because the treatments are too expensive. It is not normal [...] The health insurance card will be distributed to 400 workers and their families, so about 2,000 people will benefit from it. It will be valid for one year, and recipients will have it for free We are working on this card to understand how much it will cost the State, to be able to put a price on it in the future. We are in the experimental phase [...] we chose to work with people who work in the handling of luggage at the airport [300 people of the 'Red Caps' service], and we will add 100 people from the informal sector; merchants, and various workers with their families. This first group will serve as a pilot group, which means that we will do a test to see how it will work. Once OFATMA has tested the Pink Card, and it works the way we want it to; we can give this card to a department, then two, three... until we have the card at a national level [...]"
The Health Card holders will benefit from preventive and curative care in dermatology, surgery/trauma, Obstetrics/Gynecology, ENT, ophthalmology, internal medicine and pediatrics at the following hospitals :
Hopital Communauté Haïtienne at Frères;
Hopital OFATMA in Cité Militaire;
Hopital Diquini in Carrefour;
Hopital Fermathe in Kenscoff;
Hopital La Paix on Delmas 33.
"The Health Card, will address a special need for an individual, in health for households, fathers with lower average incomes, and will enable them to meet the health requirements," said Mr. Ronsard St-Cyr, the Minister of Social Affairs, who congratulated the President Martelly for his commitment to the Haitian people.
Over 60,000 consultations are carried out annually at the outpatient clinic of OFATMA, indicated Charles Jean Jacques, the General Manager of this hospital, announcing the presence soon of OFATMA in Caracol.
"I appreciate that OFATMA works to, not only to fulfill its obligations to those whose it is directly responsible, but that it opens up to the society in general, to help solve serious social problems. I am mindful of its presence in the North and its plans to set up hospitals in other departments of the country. I want to publicly give my support to OFATMA on behalf of the Haitian people," declared the Head of State; adding that, "Gradually, we are moving forward. The objective is to enable all Haitians to find health care when they are sick. Like the free education program where we are working to send all children to school, we are fighting so that every son of Haiti may fully enjoy their right to health, by the end of my term."
President Martelly, reiterated once again that he will never cease to take specific action designed to improve the living conditions of the population.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
ARTICLE - "LIQUID DEATH" - PART 1
"LIQUID DEATH" - PART 1
(Ayiti Kale Je) -
In early 2011, a dozen people died after drinking “clairin” – a traditional Haitian alcohol drink – made with methanol in the Fond Baptiste region, north of the capital. Another 20 or so were blinded or paralyzed.
One year later, Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) exposes that judicial, health and commerce authorities have not investigated who was responsible for the tragedy. The production and sale of clairin – and “fake clairin” – continues with no regulation. The tragedy could occur again at any moment, on an even larger scale.
Lack of political will? Incompetence? The results are the same.
“It’s like my guts were ripped out.”
That’s how Michaelle Hilaire remembers it.
“I took my cousin to the hospital. While I was waiting at the gate, he died in my arms. When I came home that Wednesday, they told me my brother was ill. I burst into tears. The next day, he was dead. And then, my husband died…. My cousin died, my brother died, my man is dead."
Mother of six, Michaelle Hilaire is one of a group of women from Fond Baptiste, in the mountains above the capital, suddenly widowed or made the wife of a paralyzed or blinded man.
In February 2011, a Fond Baptiste woman died suddenly after drinking clairin – a traditional Haitian alcohol made from sugar cane. In the days that followed, at least 11 others died, and more than 20 others in the same region or in nearby Lully and Lafiteau – most of them men – were made blind or paralyzed.
The national and international health authorities were notified and after field visits, they wrote a report pinpointing a “false clairin,” made from or mixed with methanol, a toxic alcohol generally used as a solvent.
“The tests on patients’ blood samples and on two samples of the alcohol confirmed that methanol is responsible for the poisoning of the residents of Fond Baptiste and neighboring regions,” a February 18, 2011, report said.
Another report from the same period, by Cuba’s National Toxicology Center, laid out the gravity of what had just occurred in the tiny mountain village:
“Methyl alcohol or wood alcohol [is]… the simplest of all alcohols. It is a clear and volatile liquid, with an odor that resembles ethyl alcohol. It is used as an anti-freeze, as a gum solvent, and also in the fabrication of organic products.”
“It is sweeter and much more sugary tasting than ethanol,” Dr. Ancio Dorcélus told HGW in a recent interview. Dorcélus saw the results of that sweetness first hand. He treated some thirty people who had been poisoned, but not killed, at his Arcahaie clinic.
A year later, but like yesterday…
The widow Hilaire doesn’t hide her emotions when talking about her three deceased family members. Tears in her eyes, she tries to remember those days that sunk her household into darkness.
“I had just come from the ‘Pierre’s Home’ marketplace,” she remembered.
“I saw that my husband hadn’t yet awoken. Later, he opened his eyes and asked me to take him to the hospital because he couldn’t see anything, and he couldn’t even stand up, either. His legs were wobbly,” Hilaire continued. He died not long after.
Most victims are women, with three to five children. Nowadays, most of these fatherless children don’t attend school. The widows begged a journalist to help them get the government to intervene in order to obtain justice for their dead, blinded or paralyzed partner.
Hilaire knows who sold the mortal drink and is tempted to wrest her own “justice” if authorities don’t intervene.
“If I had someone who would do it with my, I’d get my own justice. But so far I haven’t found anyone,” she said.
The septuagenarian Orinvil Olipré certainly can’t be of help. Blind and half-paralyzed, he sits on a straw mat all day near his small wooden house, listening to the noises that surround him.
Once a farmer who made his living from his fields and a few farm animals, now Olipré is completely dependent on his children. With trembling arms, and despite the damage caused by “methanolized” clairin, he tips his head back to take a sip.
“Clairin helps keep me warm. It’s really cold up here,” the old man explains.
It would be difficult for the Louis family to help, too, since they lost two men in one week. Veillé Louis’ brother died suddenly, and as he was making the coffin for him, he sipped clairin in order to help him work harder and faster. He never finished.
Perched on a mountain 1,500 meters above the sea, Fond Baptiste sits in one of the “communal sections” or rural districts, of Arcahaie, the coastal town where Haiti’s first flag was reportedly sewn. The slopes are covered with fruit trees. Residents live by raising cows and other animals, and by growing vegetables and staples like potatoes.
Because of its cold temperatures, drinking clairin at all hours of the day is very common. People drank the poisoned clairin as they labored in workshops, pruned their trees, or chatted with neighbors on a porch.
Not surprisingly, the hamlet has few services or infrastructure like a hospital or a police station. In fact, there is not one single police officer assigned to the region. And, as across all Haiti, no control over consumer goods.
The sale of clairin
Investigations by the Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) team indicate that the Williamson marketplace – at the edge of the city of Cabaret, also in the Arcahaie commune – might be the origin of the “liquid death.” During visits, HGW journalists noted that there were no evident controls placed on the sale of clairin. Wholesalers and retailers did not label their products and there were no signs of any government agent doing inspections.
Some clairin sellers add pieces of bark as “cures” for various presumed illnesses like menstrual pain or sexual impotence. Wholesalers usually transport their product in plastic 50-gallon barrels, and use old Coke, water or other bottles when selling to retailers or consumers.
Yolette Elien used to sell clairin. She told HGW that the two most popular types are “Sonson Pierre Gilles” from Cabaret and “Guys’ little hard-on” from Saint Michel de l’Attalaye.
“The sellers do whatever they want,” said Elien, who decided to change businesses after being threatened by relatives of poisoned clairin victims. Today she sells books and school supplies.
“Generally, Sonson Pierre Gilles clairin is mixed with boiled water. The same is true for other clairins, like ‘Guy’s little hard-on,” because it is so strong. The secret is in the mix,” Elien explained.
“Nobody from the government has ever come by to see how the merchants sell their product in the marketplace. Everyone does whatever he or she wants, so they can make more money,” she added.
Sonson Pierre Gilles is one of the most expensive clairins on the market. The more it’s watered down or diluted with something cheaper, the higher the profit.
Deadly mix
The methanolized clairin tragedy isn’t the first time a modified clairin has been sold by ruthless businesspeople.
During the 1990s, after the government lowered tariffs on sugar and other products, certain large import firms and merchants saw an opportunity. They imported foreign ethanol and started selling it as clairin, at half the price of the locally produced beverage. [See “Fake Clairin”]
Last year, the importers and sellers used a much more toxic alcohol: methanol.
“This problem doesn’t occur in urban areas,” explained Dr. Ancio Dorcélus, who treated many victims. “These kind of things happen in the backwoods, far from the capital, for the simple reason that the urban population isn’t going to drink ‘fake clairin.’ They’ll pay for the more expensive, real clairin. Villagers, who come down from the mountains, will buy the least expensive product.”
“Methanol should not be in Haiti. It is such a toxic product – even just inhaling it can cause death,” continued the doctor who today works for WHO/PAHO (World Health Organization/Pan-American Health Organization). “The odor alone can make you blind, by killing your optic nerves. Whether you breathe it in, or absorb it through your skin, this product is dangerous.”
Dangerous… but legal in Haiti.
But the new Minister of Public Health and Population doesn't seem to know that. Speaking to journalists recently, Dr. Florence D. Guillaume declared that the sale of methanol was strictly “prohibited” on Haitian soil.
“And in any case, these products don’t fall from the sky. One must control the ports and borders in order to resolve this situation,” she pronounced for the microphones.
But she is wrong. Methanol is completely legal.
“The sale of methanol is absolutely not illegal. Methanol is used all over the place. One must not confuse methanol with ethanol. Methanol is used in industry, in woodworking,” Clermont Ijoassin, director of Overseas Commerce for the Ministry of Commerce, told HGW in an interview in February 2012.
“The only alcohol which is subject to import rules is ethanol or ethyl alcohol. Our ministry does not regulate methanol in any way,” Ijoassin added.
Either Dr. Guillaume was misinformed, or she does not remember chemistry class, or she was trying to dissuade the journalist from his investigation.
Difficult to know.
And unfortunately, that was not the first, nor the last, unsubstantiated or erroneous declaration in the liquid death tragedy.
(Ayiti Kale Je) -
In early 2011, a dozen people died after drinking “clairin” – a traditional Haitian alcohol drink – made with methanol in the Fond Baptiste region, north of the capital. Another 20 or so were blinded or paralyzed.
One year later, Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) exposes that judicial, health and commerce authorities have not investigated who was responsible for the tragedy. The production and sale of clairin – and “fake clairin” – continues with no regulation. The tragedy could occur again at any moment, on an even larger scale.
Lack of political will? Incompetence? The results are the same.
“It’s like my guts were ripped out.”
That’s how Michaelle Hilaire remembers it.
“I took my cousin to the hospital. While I was waiting at the gate, he died in my arms. When I came home that Wednesday, they told me my brother was ill. I burst into tears. The next day, he was dead. And then, my husband died…. My cousin died, my brother died, my man is dead."
Mother of six, Michaelle Hilaire is one of a group of women from Fond Baptiste, in the mountains above the capital, suddenly widowed or made the wife of a paralyzed or blinded man.
In February 2011, a Fond Baptiste woman died suddenly after drinking clairin – a traditional Haitian alcohol made from sugar cane. In the days that followed, at least 11 others died, and more than 20 others in the same region or in nearby Lully and Lafiteau – most of them men – were made blind or paralyzed.
The national and international health authorities were notified and after field visits, they wrote a report pinpointing a “false clairin,” made from or mixed with methanol, a toxic alcohol generally used as a solvent.
“The tests on patients’ blood samples and on two samples of the alcohol confirmed that methanol is responsible for the poisoning of the residents of Fond Baptiste and neighboring regions,” a February 18, 2011, report said.
Another report from the same period, by Cuba’s National Toxicology Center, laid out the gravity of what had just occurred in the tiny mountain village:
“Methyl alcohol or wood alcohol [is]… the simplest of all alcohols. It is a clear and volatile liquid, with an odor that resembles ethyl alcohol. It is used as an anti-freeze, as a gum solvent, and also in the fabrication of organic products.”
“It is sweeter and much more sugary tasting than ethanol,” Dr. Ancio Dorcélus told HGW in a recent interview. Dorcélus saw the results of that sweetness first hand. He treated some thirty people who had been poisoned, but not killed, at his Arcahaie clinic.
A year later, but like yesterday…
The widow Hilaire doesn’t hide her emotions when talking about her three deceased family members. Tears in her eyes, she tries to remember those days that sunk her household into darkness.
“I had just come from the ‘Pierre’s Home’ marketplace,” she remembered.
“I saw that my husband hadn’t yet awoken. Later, he opened his eyes and asked me to take him to the hospital because he couldn’t see anything, and he couldn’t even stand up, either. His legs were wobbly,” Hilaire continued. He died not long after.
Most victims are women, with three to five children. Nowadays, most of these fatherless children don’t attend school. The widows begged a journalist to help them get the government to intervene in order to obtain justice for their dead, blinded or paralyzed partner.
Hilaire knows who sold the mortal drink and is tempted to wrest her own “justice” if authorities don’t intervene.
“If I had someone who would do it with my, I’d get my own justice. But so far I haven’t found anyone,” she said.
The septuagenarian Orinvil Olipré certainly can’t be of help. Blind and half-paralyzed, he sits on a straw mat all day near his small wooden house, listening to the noises that surround him.
Once a farmer who made his living from his fields and a few farm animals, now Olipré is completely dependent on his children. With trembling arms, and despite the damage caused by “methanolized” clairin, he tips his head back to take a sip.
“Clairin helps keep me warm. It’s really cold up here,” the old man explains.
It would be difficult for the Louis family to help, too, since they lost two men in one week. Veillé Louis’ brother died suddenly, and as he was making the coffin for him, he sipped clairin in order to help him work harder and faster. He never finished.
Perched on a mountain 1,500 meters above the sea, Fond Baptiste sits in one of the “communal sections” or rural districts, of Arcahaie, the coastal town where Haiti’s first flag was reportedly sewn. The slopes are covered with fruit trees. Residents live by raising cows and other animals, and by growing vegetables and staples like potatoes.
Because of its cold temperatures, drinking clairin at all hours of the day is very common. People drank the poisoned clairin as they labored in workshops, pruned their trees, or chatted with neighbors on a porch.
Not surprisingly, the hamlet has few services or infrastructure like a hospital or a police station. In fact, there is not one single police officer assigned to the region. And, as across all Haiti, no control over consumer goods.
The sale of clairin
Investigations by the Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) team indicate that the Williamson marketplace – at the edge of the city of Cabaret, also in the Arcahaie commune – might be the origin of the “liquid death.” During visits, HGW journalists noted that there were no evident controls placed on the sale of clairin. Wholesalers and retailers did not label their products and there were no signs of any government agent doing inspections.
Some clairin sellers add pieces of bark as “cures” for various presumed illnesses like menstrual pain or sexual impotence. Wholesalers usually transport their product in plastic 50-gallon barrels, and use old Coke, water or other bottles when selling to retailers or consumers.
Yolette Elien used to sell clairin. She told HGW that the two most popular types are “Sonson Pierre Gilles” from Cabaret and “Guys’ little hard-on” from Saint Michel de l’Attalaye.
“The sellers do whatever they want,” said Elien, who decided to change businesses after being threatened by relatives of poisoned clairin victims. Today she sells books and school supplies.
“Generally, Sonson Pierre Gilles clairin is mixed with boiled water. The same is true for other clairins, like ‘Guy’s little hard-on,” because it is so strong. The secret is in the mix,” Elien explained.
“Nobody from the government has ever come by to see how the merchants sell their product in the marketplace. Everyone does whatever he or she wants, so they can make more money,” she added.
Sonson Pierre Gilles is one of the most expensive clairins on the market. The more it’s watered down or diluted with something cheaper, the higher the profit.
Deadly mix
The methanolized clairin tragedy isn’t the first time a modified clairin has been sold by ruthless businesspeople.
During the 1990s, after the government lowered tariffs on sugar and other products, certain large import firms and merchants saw an opportunity. They imported foreign ethanol and started selling it as clairin, at half the price of the locally produced beverage. [See “Fake Clairin”]
Last year, the importers and sellers used a much more toxic alcohol: methanol.
“This problem doesn’t occur in urban areas,” explained Dr. Ancio Dorcélus, who treated many victims. “These kind of things happen in the backwoods, far from the capital, for the simple reason that the urban population isn’t going to drink ‘fake clairin.’ They’ll pay for the more expensive, real clairin. Villagers, who come down from the mountains, will buy the least expensive product.”
“Methanol should not be in Haiti. It is such a toxic product – even just inhaling it can cause death,” continued the doctor who today works for WHO/PAHO (World Health Organization/Pan-American Health Organization). “The odor alone can make you blind, by killing your optic nerves. Whether you breathe it in, or absorb it through your skin, this product is dangerous.”
Dangerous… but legal in Haiti.
But the new Minister of Public Health and Population doesn't seem to know that. Speaking to journalists recently, Dr. Florence D. Guillaume declared that the sale of methanol was strictly “prohibited” on Haitian soil.
“And in any case, these products don’t fall from the sky. One must control the ports and borders in order to resolve this situation,” she pronounced for the microphones.
But she is wrong. Methanol is completely legal.
“The sale of methanol is absolutely not illegal. Methanol is used all over the place. One must not confuse methanol with ethanol. Methanol is used in industry, in woodworking,” Clermont Ijoassin, director of Overseas Commerce for the Ministry of Commerce, told HGW in an interview in February 2012.
“The only alcohol which is subject to import rules is ethanol or ethyl alcohol. Our ministry does not regulate methanol in any way,” Ijoassin added.
Either Dr. Guillaume was misinformed, or she does not remember chemistry class, or she was trying to dissuade the journalist from his investigation.
Difficult to know.
And unfortunately, that was not the first, nor the last, unsubstantiated or erroneous declaration in the liquid death tragedy.
ARTICLE - "LIQUID DEATH" - PART 2
"LIQUID DEATH" - PART 2
(Ayiti Kale Je) -
Officially, Haitian consumers are not left on their own, subject to the brutality of the marketplace. They are protected by the Office of Quality Control and Consumer Protection. At least, on paper.
The agency – part of the Ministry of Commerce – has 22 employees with “many services,” according to Michelle Paultre, the director.
However, they lack a laboratory, and they lack sufficient resources, according to Paultre, who has headed the agency since 1988.
“Ideally we would have inspectors in the streets every day, but that is not always the case, nor is it always possible,” deplored Paultre, who met with Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) in her office at the Ministry.
Paultre also said the agency lacks vehicles that would allow for investigations and more frequent supervision. And the country lacks up to date regulations. Verifications are done based on the regulations in other countries, she noted.
“We need to establish a statutory framework in Haiti so that we can really control quality. We need legislation that will place the responsibility on the businesspeople and the producers,” she recommended.
According to the director, the most common tasks executed by her teams are verification of gas pump measurements, some checks at supermarkets, and quality inspections of coffee and cacao for export.
Generally, the teams don’t work in public marketplaces unless there are “consumer complaints,” she said. They undertake investigations “if there is a situation that puts people in danger.”
Asked about the “methanolized” clairin, Paultre admitted that her office was aware of the crisis and had even sent a delegation into the field. The team worked “to find, to identify the sellers, but… we couldn’t find him…” she said.
“I think the Ministry of Health and other authorities – like the police – intervened,” she added. “You should find out. Those are the two authorities indicated to take the affair in hand,” she added.
“When it comes to carrying out investigations, [our] ministry is not the one to do it,” she said, as an excuse, and despite the fact that she had – just a few minutes earlier – said her administration carries out investigations “if there is a situation that puts people in danger.”
In short, the Office of Quality Control and Consumer Protection did not do more than a minimal inquiry into the lack of control, nor did it do anything to protect consumers of clairin – last year, today or in the future.
But, she insisted helpfully, in these kinds of situations, “the ministry can remain concerned and can ask the population to be careful. We broadcast information to the public so that the consumer can protect himself.”
And justice?
The director of the Office of Quality Control and Consumer Protection admits she hasn’t done anything, and recommends that consumers “self-protect.”
When it comes to justice, the situation is much the same.
A year after the death of at least 12 people and permanent damage inflicted on at least 30 others, HGW could find no evidence of any police investigation or legal proceedings, even though two ministers and other authorities have thrown out the now infamous “an investigation is underway” response to inquiries.
Questioned by a US journalist over a year ago, Dr. Gabriel Timothée, General Director of the Ministry of Public Health and Population swore that enquiries would begin soon.
“The ministries of Justice and of Commerce are going to launch an investigation,” he told reporter Georgienne Nienaber in January 2011.
Over recent months, HGW tried many times to follow up with Dr. Timothée. An interview was never granted.
More recently, questioned during a press conference, the new Minister of Health, Dr. Florence D. Guillaume, repeated Timothée’s claims, and told journalists that an investigation was “underway.”
However, there are many reasons to doubt that affirmation.
Questioned by HGW on February 17, 2012, about the case, the new Commissaire du gouvernment (like the US Attorney General), Jean Renel Sénateus, said: “I don’t know about any Fond Baptiste affair.”
The second Greffier (a kind of legal registrar) of the Port-au-Prince Parquet (public prosecutor’s office) – responsible for all of the dossiers sent to the Commissaire for official investigations – confirmed that there was no dossier on the Font Baptiste deaths at the Parquet.
The lack of judicial action is a flagrant violation of Haiti’s Code d’instruction criminelle or Criminal Code. Articles 9 through 13 are clear: government authorities are obligated to take action.
According to Article 10, police are responsible for searching for criminals “in crimes, misdemeanors and violations that have affected people or property.”
HGW decided to go back to Arcahaie, “capital” of the commune in which Fond Baptiste is located, to find out what the authorities did last year.
Police officer Edner Vertilus – who works at the Arcahaie station – told journalists, “No, police officers did not go up the mountain to Fond Baptiste because none of the relatives of the victims filed a complaint.”
A police officer who does not understand Haiti’s Criminal Code? It’s possible, but what about his supervisors and other authorities?
According to Article 11, “Justices of the peace (who act as detectives) or their substitutes will investigate crimes, offenses and violations throughout the commune...”
Article 12 is even clearer about the government’s responsibilities:
“When the affair is something that should be brought before the court – either correctional or criminal – the justices of the peace or their substitutes will send to their superior – who will represent the government – all of the relevant information and evidence…”
However, when the HGW journalists questioned the head Justice of the peace at the Regional Tribunal for the Commune of Arcahaie, Claudy Henry-Claude, he clipped: “We didn’t follow-up this affair.”
“There was no investigation on this affair because we did not go up to the communal section of Fond Baptiste,” he said, unashamed, in an interview on December 22, 2011.
The police officer confirmed the story.
“We did not go into the field when the Ministry of Health delegation from Port-au-Prince was visiting Fond Baptiste on February 18, 2011,” Vertilus said.
Why?
“That delegation was supposed to come and pick up a team of police officers who were supposed to do evidence-gathering, but they didn’t do that. So in other words, that delegation only undertook medical tasks. There was no legal or judicial representation that would have assured legal action,” explained Vertilus, who also appeared unashamed at the complete abdication of judicial and police authorities.
In short, in addition to openly violating the Criminal Code, a justice of the peace and a police officer explain that there was no investigation because the Ministry of Health delegation did not give them a ride up the mountain.
The authorities lack of action represents a violation of law, according to lawyer Patrice Florvilus.
“The Commissaire du gouvernment and his assistant are obligated to look for the guilty when it is a case of crimes and offenses,” Florvilus explained in an interview last month.
“They don’t need to wait for victims’ family members to file a complaint. They simply need to be made aware of the incident in order to open an investigation.”
What explanation might there be for this violation of Haitian law?
Interviewed last October on the subject, Dr. Jean Evans Vital-Herne, who works for the Ministry of Health in Léogâne – site of another scandal involving “fake clairin” [see “Fake Clairin”] – hinted at one possible explanation.
“Well, this thing is… very political, very, very, because they know who is responsible for selling it [sic], do you understand me? They know the seller, and even take his defense, but they are the ones who are supposed to be doing something about it. This is why there has been no judicial action,” the doctor said, without further elaboration.
HGW could not confirm Vital-Herne’s theory, but it adds an interesting element.
No truth, no control, no protection, no justice…
Who is Vital-Herne’s “seller”? Where are the investigations promised by Drs. Timothée and Guillaume? Who is going to reprimand the police and judicial officials who didn’t do their duties? And who is going to take care of the families who have lost a relative? Who will look after the people can no longer see or walk?
The government failed at every level, but this is nothing new to the people of Fond Baptiste.
The widow Jesula Fernius lost her husband in the tragedy. Their eighth child is not even two years old. Her husband – a mason – drank his clairin on a Thursday. Less than two days later, he died.
“He said he couldn’t see anything,” she remembered. “He got to a pick-up truck that took him to the hospital, but then he said his heart hurt, and then he couldn’t even walk.”
And then he died.
With her husband gone, Fernius had to take most of her children out of school.
“I have eight children. What a waste,” she said.
To survive, she sells rum and other drinks, but not clairin.
“A lot of merchants still sell clairin in Fond Baptiste, as if they can’t remember what happened. They say the adulterated clairin is not around any more, so there is no reason to worry.”
Really?
With the complete failure of the government to fulfill its obligations, who would dare to sip one of Haiti’s traditional drinks, made from homegrown sugar cane? Who will take the risk of being poisoned? Not the privileged, who drink fine, sweet rum or imported whiskies.
The victims next time will be the same as last time – the majority, the popular masses… ignored, excluded and oppressed.
(Ayiti Kale Je) -
Officially, Haitian consumers are not left on their own, subject to the brutality of the marketplace. They are protected by the Office of Quality Control and Consumer Protection. At least, on paper.
The agency – part of the Ministry of Commerce – has 22 employees with “many services,” according to Michelle Paultre, the director.
However, they lack a laboratory, and they lack sufficient resources, according to Paultre, who has headed the agency since 1988.
“Ideally we would have inspectors in the streets every day, but that is not always the case, nor is it always possible,” deplored Paultre, who met with Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) in her office at the Ministry.
Paultre also said the agency lacks vehicles that would allow for investigations and more frequent supervision. And the country lacks up to date regulations. Verifications are done based on the regulations in other countries, she noted.
“We need to establish a statutory framework in Haiti so that we can really control quality. We need legislation that will place the responsibility on the businesspeople and the producers,” she recommended.
According to the director, the most common tasks executed by her teams are verification of gas pump measurements, some checks at supermarkets, and quality inspections of coffee and cacao for export.
Generally, the teams don’t work in public marketplaces unless there are “consumer complaints,” she said. They undertake investigations “if there is a situation that puts people in danger.”
Asked about the “methanolized” clairin, Paultre admitted that her office was aware of the crisis and had even sent a delegation into the field. The team worked “to find, to identify the sellers, but… we couldn’t find him…” she said.
“I think the Ministry of Health and other authorities – like the police – intervened,” she added. “You should find out. Those are the two authorities indicated to take the affair in hand,” she added.
“When it comes to carrying out investigations, [our] ministry is not the one to do it,” she said, as an excuse, and despite the fact that she had – just a few minutes earlier – said her administration carries out investigations “if there is a situation that puts people in danger.”
In short, the Office of Quality Control and Consumer Protection did not do more than a minimal inquiry into the lack of control, nor did it do anything to protect consumers of clairin – last year, today or in the future.
But, she insisted helpfully, in these kinds of situations, “the ministry can remain concerned and can ask the population to be careful. We broadcast information to the public so that the consumer can protect himself.”
And justice?
The director of the Office of Quality Control and Consumer Protection admits she hasn’t done anything, and recommends that consumers “self-protect.”
When it comes to justice, the situation is much the same.
A year after the death of at least 12 people and permanent damage inflicted on at least 30 others, HGW could find no evidence of any police investigation or legal proceedings, even though two ministers and other authorities have thrown out the now infamous “an investigation is underway” response to inquiries.
Questioned by a US journalist over a year ago, Dr. Gabriel Timothée, General Director of the Ministry of Public Health and Population swore that enquiries would begin soon.
“The ministries of Justice and of Commerce are going to launch an investigation,” he told reporter Georgienne Nienaber in January 2011.
Over recent months, HGW tried many times to follow up with Dr. Timothée. An interview was never granted.
More recently, questioned during a press conference, the new Minister of Health, Dr. Florence D. Guillaume, repeated Timothée’s claims, and told journalists that an investigation was “underway.”
However, there are many reasons to doubt that affirmation.
Questioned by HGW on February 17, 2012, about the case, the new Commissaire du gouvernment (like the US Attorney General), Jean Renel Sénateus, said: “I don’t know about any Fond Baptiste affair.”
The second Greffier (a kind of legal registrar) of the Port-au-Prince Parquet (public prosecutor’s office) – responsible for all of the dossiers sent to the Commissaire for official investigations – confirmed that there was no dossier on the Font Baptiste deaths at the Parquet.
The lack of judicial action is a flagrant violation of Haiti’s Code d’instruction criminelle or Criminal Code. Articles 9 through 13 are clear: government authorities are obligated to take action.
According to Article 10, police are responsible for searching for criminals “in crimes, misdemeanors and violations that have affected people or property.”
HGW decided to go back to Arcahaie, “capital” of the commune in which Fond Baptiste is located, to find out what the authorities did last year.
Police officer Edner Vertilus – who works at the Arcahaie station – told journalists, “No, police officers did not go up the mountain to Fond Baptiste because none of the relatives of the victims filed a complaint.”
A police officer who does not understand Haiti’s Criminal Code? It’s possible, but what about his supervisors and other authorities?
According to Article 11, “Justices of the peace (who act as detectives) or their substitutes will investigate crimes, offenses and violations throughout the commune...”
Article 12 is even clearer about the government’s responsibilities:
“When the affair is something that should be brought before the court – either correctional or criminal – the justices of the peace or their substitutes will send to their superior – who will represent the government – all of the relevant information and evidence…”
However, when the HGW journalists questioned the head Justice of the peace at the Regional Tribunal for the Commune of Arcahaie, Claudy Henry-Claude, he clipped: “We didn’t follow-up this affair.”
“There was no investigation on this affair because we did not go up to the communal section of Fond Baptiste,” he said, unashamed, in an interview on December 22, 2011.
The police officer confirmed the story.
“We did not go into the field when the Ministry of Health delegation from Port-au-Prince was visiting Fond Baptiste on February 18, 2011,” Vertilus said.
Why?
“That delegation was supposed to come and pick up a team of police officers who were supposed to do evidence-gathering, but they didn’t do that. So in other words, that delegation only undertook medical tasks. There was no legal or judicial representation that would have assured legal action,” explained Vertilus, who also appeared unashamed at the complete abdication of judicial and police authorities.
In short, in addition to openly violating the Criminal Code, a justice of the peace and a police officer explain that there was no investigation because the Ministry of Health delegation did not give them a ride up the mountain.
The authorities lack of action represents a violation of law, according to lawyer Patrice Florvilus.
“The Commissaire du gouvernment and his assistant are obligated to look for the guilty when it is a case of crimes and offenses,” Florvilus explained in an interview last month.
“They don’t need to wait for victims’ family members to file a complaint. They simply need to be made aware of the incident in order to open an investigation.”
What explanation might there be for this violation of Haitian law?
Interviewed last October on the subject, Dr. Jean Evans Vital-Herne, who works for the Ministry of Health in Léogâne – site of another scandal involving “fake clairin” [see “Fake Clairin”] – hinted at one possible explanation.
“Well, this thing is… very political, very, very, because they know who is responsible for selling it [sic], do you understand me? They know the seller, and even take his defense, but they are the ones who are supposed to be doing something about it. This is why there has been no judicial action,” the doctor said, without further elaboration.
HGW could not confirm Vital-Herne’s theory, but it adds an interesting element.
No truth, no control, no protection, no justice…
Who is Vital-Herne’s “seller”? Where are the investigations promised by Drs. Timothée and Guillaume? Who is going to reprimand the police and judicial officials who didn’t do their duties? And who is going to take care of the families who have lost a relative? Who will look after the people can no longer see or walk?
The government failed at every level, but this is nothing new to the people of Fond Baptiste.
The widow Jesula Fernius lost her husband in the tragedy. Their eighth child is not even two years old. Her husband – a mason – drank his clairin on a Thursday. Less than two days later, he died.
“He said he couldn’t see anything,” she remembered. “He got to a pick-up truck that took him to the hospital, but then he said his heart hurt, and then he couldn’t even walk.”
And then he died.
With her husband gone, Fernius had to take most of her children out of school.
“I have eight children. What a waste,” she said.
To survive, she sells rum and other drinks, but not clairin.
“A lot of merchants still sell clairin in Fond Baptiste, as if they can’t remember what happened. They say the adulterated clairin is not around any more, so there is no reason to worry.”
Really?
With the complete failure of the government to fulfill its obligations, who would dare to sip one of Haiti’s traditional drinks, made from homegrown sugar cane? Who will take the risk of being poisoned? Not the privileged, who drink fine, sweet rum or imported whiskies.
The victims next time will be the same as last time – the majority, the popular masses… ignored, excluded and oppressed.
ARTICLE - "FAKE CLAIRIN"
“FAKE CLAIRIN”
(Ayite Kale Je) -
The tragedy of the Fond Baptiste “methanolized” clairin isn’t the first “fake clairin” to put people’s lives – and livelihoods – in danger.
About 15 years ago, cane planters and distillers pulled out machetes and blocked truckloads of ethanol flooding across the Haitian-Dominican border.
“The problem started in 1996… A couple of big industrialists and major landowners were importing ethanol from the Dominican Republic,” Michelle Montas remembered in a recent interview with Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW).
At the time, Montas was News Director for Radio Haïti Inter, owned by her now-late husband, Jean Dominique. “They were selling that ethanol as ‘clairin’ and it was making people sick… [as well as] undercutting real clairin on the market.”
At the time, according to the biweekly Haiti Info, there were 150 to 200 "gildivs" or distilleries around Léogâne. Their production – using locally grown cane – accounted for about one-fourth of the country’s clairin. To make “fake clairin,” mixers were cutting the imported ethanol with water and “seasoning” it with a little real clairin. Back then, a gallon of “fake clairin” sold for 20-25 gourdes, whereas a gallon of the real thing sold for 50 gourdes.
Why was foreign-produced ethanol suddenly flooding Haiti in 1996?
Ethanol was only one of hundreds of foreign-produced foods and beverages that rapidly swamped the country beginning in late 1995 due to a newly voted tariff regime.
Under pressure from Washington, and as part of the deal that allowed him to return to Haiti after the bloody three-year (1991-1994) coup d’état, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide agreed to get parliament to cut tariffs on foreign sugar, ethanol and scores of other products. Once the law was voted, the average tariff went from around 50 percent to about 2.9 percent, according to a 2006 study by Christian Aid.
Evolution of tariffs on selected commodities
Before 1995 2010 (January)
Rice 50 % 3 %
Corn 50 % 15 %
Beans 50 % 3.5 %
Wheat Flour 50 % 3.5 %
Source: USAID, 2010
At a press conference in 1996, then-Minister of Commerce Fresnel Germain defended the lowered tariffs, saying that his government (René Préval had by now become president) was “in favor of modernization” and “free competition.”
According to Germain, the tariffs on alcohol were now either five or zero percent: the non-denatured alcohol tariff had been cut from 20 percent to five percent, and for denatured alcohol, down to zero.
Non-denatured alcohol is “pure alcohol” or ethanol and can be consumed, whereas denatured alcohol is ethanol that has been mixed with additives – like mineral oil or methanol (wood alcohol) – that make it not consumable and, in some cases, highly toxic.
When Germain looked into the “fake clairin” affair, he discovered that the major alcohol importers apparently weren’t satisfied with paying even the measly five percent tariff to the government. The importers were claiming that all of their alcohol imports were “denatured.”
“Everyone who imports alcohol could call it ‘denatured alcohol’ so they don’t have to pay duties!” Germain said, angrily, at the October 11, 1996, press conference. But he also said his ministry was virtually powerless, because it did not “have a structure or laboratory that could make an analysis of products being imported.”
Realizing that the government was going to do nothing, planters and distillers took matters into their own hands.
“There was a big mobilization because that ethanol was doing more than make people sick! It was also destroying the clairin and cane industries,” Montas remembered. “Farmers came from other parts of Haiti and they blocked the highway.”
But the importers fought back. That same week, an anonymous “agronomist” took out a full-page advertisement (at the cost of US$165, according to Haiti Info) in Le Nouvelliste daily newspaper extolling the virtues of “alimentary alcohol” as safer than the alcohol made a local distilleries that could – according to the anonymous “agronomist” – cause “nerve lesions” and “varieties of paralysis.”
(Actually, methanol and denatured alcohol cause those injuries, not locally produced clairin or locally produced ethanol.)
“The most recent law voted by the parliament in favor of modernization offers a good example of the government’s new orientation in favor of free competition,” the ad clucked.
At the time, everyone seemed to know who the importers were.
Edner Désir of the Association of Planters and Distillers of Léogâne told Haiti Info that the two major importers were industrialists Fritz Mevs and Dr. Reginald Boulos. Montas remembers that her radio’s news reports also named those names.
“We said their names,” Montas said. “But nothing ever happened. Not at the level of the Ministry of Commerce, not at the level of the Ministry of Justice.”
Today, there are three or four importers of ethanol, and all imports are supposedly registered with the Ministry of Commerce, supposedly in order to assure imported ethanol does not compete with clairin. But there seems to be little control. Foreign ethanol – and methanol, apparently – continue to ravage of the local sugar and clairin industries. Many farmers have switched to plantains or let land lie fallow. Some distilleries have closed down.
Last January, Léogâne residents attacked a truckload of ethanol and set some of the barrels on fire. At meetings, on the airwaves and in newspapers, distillers, planters and local officials pleaded with them to stop the flood of Dominican and Brazilian ethanol.
“We can’t let Léogâne’s sugarcane and clairin production die out! They are the spinal cord of our region,” Wilson St. Juste, vice mayor, told Le Nouvelliste on January 19.
The government’s reaction? To hold a press conference and declare that “ethanol” does not pose “any danger” to human health, without noting that there are two kinds of ethanol – denatured and non-denatured.
In addition, Minister of Health Dr. Florence D. Guillaume also promised that “an inter-ministry commission” had been formed to look into the toll that foreign ethanol has taken on local production.
Senator Wesner Polycarpe also said that one solution would be to train farmers in many different areas.
But will “training” raise tariffs or halt imports?
What can be expected from yet another “commission”?
Will it convince Haiti’s powerful to suddenly cease their imports and forego their massive profits?
When will government authorities recognize that one of the main causes of “liquid death” and so many other crimes and tragedies is the result of their blind embrace of savage neoliberal policies?
(Ayite Kale Je) -
The tragedy of the Fond Baptiste “methanolized” clairin isn’t the first “fake clairin” to put people’s lives – and livelihoods – in danger.
About 15 years ago, cane planters and distillers pulled out machetes and blocked truckloads of ethanol flooding across the Haitian-Dominican border.
“The problem started in 1996… A couple of big industrialists and major landowners were importing ethanol from the Dominican Republic,” Michelle Montas remembered in a recent interview with Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW).
At the time, Montas was News Director for Radio Haïti Inter, owned by her now-late husband, Jean Dominique. “They were selling that ethanol as ‘clairin’ and it was making people sick… [as well as] undercutting real clairin on the market.”
At the time, according to the biweekly Haiti Info, there were 150 to 200 "gildivs" or distilleries around Léogâne. Their production – using locally grown cane – accounted for about one-fourth of the country’s clairin. To make “fake clairin,” mixers were cutting the imported ethanol with water and “seasoning” it with a little real clairin. Back then, a gallon of “fake clairin” sold for 20-25 gourdes, whereas a gallon of the real thing sold for 50 gourdes.
Why was foreign-produced ethanol suddenly flooding Haiti in 1996?
Ethanol was only one of hundreds of foreign-produced foods and beverages that rapidly swamped the country beginning in late 1995 due to a newly voted tariff regime.
Under pressure from Washington, and as part of the deal that allowed him to return to Haiti after the bloody three-year (1991-1994) coup d’état, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide agreed to get parliament to cut tariffs on foreign sugar, ethanol and scores of other products. Once the law was voted, the average tariff went from around 50 percent to about 2.9 percent, according to a 2006 study by Christian Aid.
Evolution of tariffs on selected commodities
Before 1995 2010 (January)
Rice 50 % 3 %
Corn 50 % 15 %
Beans 50 % 3.5 %
Wheat Flour 50 % 3.5 %
Source: USAID, 2010
At a press conference in 1996, then-Minister of Commerce Fresnel Germain defended the lowered tariffs, saying that his government (René Préval had by now become president) was “in favor of modernization” and “free competition.”
According to Germain, the tariffs on alcohol were now either five or zero percent: the non-denatured alcohol tariff had been cut from 20 percent to five percent, and for denatured alcohol, down to zero.
Non-denatured alcohol is “pure alcohol” or ethanol and can be consumed, whereas denatured alcohol is ethanol that has been mixed with additives – like mineral oil or methanol (wood alcohol) – that make it not consumable and, in some cases, highly toxic.
When Germain looked into the “fake clairin” affair, he discovered that the major alcohol importers apparently weren’t satisfied with paying even the measly five percent tariff to the government. The importers were claiming that all of their alcohol imports were “denatured.”
“Everyone who imports alcohol could call it ‘denatured alcohol’ so they don’t have to pay duties!” Germain said, angrily, at the October 11, 1996, press conference. But he also said his ministry was virtually powerless, because it did not “have a structure or laboratory that could make an analysis of products being imported.”
Realizing that the government was going to do nothing, planters and distillers took matters into their own hands.
“There was a big mobilization because that ethanol was doing more than make people sick! It was also destroying the clairin and cane industries,” Montas remembered. “Farmers came from other parts of Haiti and they blocked the highway.”
But the importers fought back. That same week, an anonymous “agronomist” took out a full-page advertisement (at the cost of US$165, according to Haiti Info) in Le Nouvelliste daily newspaper extolling the virtues of “alimentary alcohol” as safer than the alcohol made a local distilleries that could – according to the anonymous “agronomist” – cause “nerve lesions” and “varieties of paralysis.”
(Actually, methanol and denatured alcohol cause those injuries, not locally produced clairin or locally produced ethanol.)
“The most recent law voted by the parliament in favor of modernization offers a good example of the government’s new orientation in favor of free competition,” the ad clucked.
At the time, everyone seemed to know who the importers were.
Edner Désir of the Association of Planters and Distillers of Léogâne told Haiti Info that the two major importers were industrialists Fritz Mevs and Dr. Reginald Boulos. Montas remembers that her radio’s news reports also named those names.
“We said their names,” Montas said. “But nothing ever happened. Not at the level of the Ministry of Commerce, not at the level of the Ministry of Justice.”
Today, there are three or four importers of ethanol, and all imports are supposedly registered with the Ministry of Commerce, supposedly in order to assure imported ethanol does not compete with clairin. But there seems to be little control. Foreign ethanol – and methanol, apparently – continue to ravage of the local sugar and clairin industries. Many farmers have switched to plantains or let land lie fallow. Some distilleries have closed down.
Last January, Léogâne residents attacked a truckload of ethanol and set some of the barrels on fire. At meetings, on the airwaves and in newspapers, distillers, planters and local officials pleaded with them to stop the flood of Dominican and Brazilian ethanol.
“We can’t let Léogâne’s sugarcane and clairin production die out! They are the spinal cord of our region,” Wilson St. Juste, vice mayor, told Le Nouvelliste on January 19.
The government’s reaction? To hold a press conference and declare that “ethanol” does not pose “any danger” to human health, without noting that there are two kinds of ethanol – denatured and non-denatured.
In addition, Minister of Health Dr. Florence D. Guillaume also promised that “an inter-ministry commission” had been formed to look into the toll that foreign ethanol has taken on local production.
Senator Wesner Polycarpe also said that one solution would be to train farmers in many different areas.
But will “training” raise tariffs or halt imports?
What can be expected from yet another “commission”?
Will it convince Haiti’s powerful to suddenly cease their imports and forego their massive profits?
When will government authorities recognize that one of the main causes of “liquid death” and so many other crimes and tragedies is the result of their blind embrace of savage neoliberal policies?
ARTICLE - MEDICAL CARE STRATEGIES
STRATEGIES FOR THE REINFORCEMENT OF MEDICAL CARE IN HAITI
(Haiti Libre) -
A reflection on the management of medical care and strategies for the strengthening of emergency medical care in Haiti, was held as part of the week of the diaspora, at the fourth day of activities organized by the Ministry of Haitians living abroad (MHAVE), around the official celebration of the National Day of the Diaspora, on April 20.
Convened by the MHAVE, this panel that brought together doctors from Haiti and abroad, was allowed to assess the country's health system, and to consider possible solutions.
Dr. Joseph Pierre Paul Cadet, President of the Executive Committee of the Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad (AMHE) declared: "Haiti gave a lot without making any claims in terms of investment in university education, to provide doctors, nurses etc... to the developed countries". He thinks that it is time to think about the return of these investments in the country, by the return to Haiti, of these health professionals and their involvement in the community.
In its considerations, the AMHE notes that the Haitian health system, remained for years in a precarious position. The AMHE estimated that the earthquake of January 12, 2010 has complicated the situation and the problem will only worsen without a rapid intervention; noting that only 8.3% of the population have adequate sanitation and 8.5% have access to adequate distribution of water...
To ease this burden, those of the Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad, proposes a framework of reflection, and to an awareness of the issue for a lot of people. Topics covered during these discussions, were among others: E-health in Haiti: from theory to practice with a video presentation; Training and exchanges from Canada (video presentation); medical education; response to medical emergencies : support...
As part of a program of distance learning developed for the benefit of the Medical School of Haiti; "Residents of Haitian hospitals, will be invited in hospitals in New York," promised the participants, knowing that the future of any society depends on its human resources, who must be protected.
According to Dr. Aldy Cartor, who spoke on the strategies of strengthening the emergency medical care in Haiti, "it is time that we define 'Haitian' strategies, able to save lives after a traffic accident", citing as an example the recent accidents on National Road #2, in the height of Morne Tapion, which caused extensive loss of life due to lack of emergency care.
(Haiti Libre) -
A reflection on the management of medical care and strategies for the strengthening of emergency medical care in Haiti, was held as part of the week of the diaspora, at the fourth day of activities organized by the Ministry of Haitians living abroad (MHAVE), around the official celebration of the National Day of the Diaspora, on April 20.
Convened by the MHAVE, this panel that brought together doctors from Haiti and abroad, was allowed to assess the country's health system, and to consider possible solutions.
Dr. Joseph Pierre Paul Cadet, President of the Executive Committee of the Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad (AMHE) declared: "Haiti gave a lot without making any claims in terms of investment in university education, to provide doctors, nurses etc... to the developed countries". He thinks that it is time to think about the return of these investments in the country, by the return to Haiti, of these health professionals and their involvement in the community.
In its considerations, the AMHE notes that the Haitian health system, remained for years in a precarious position. The AMHE estimated that the earthquake of January 12, 2010 has complicated the situation and the problem will only worsen without a rapid intervention; noting that only 8.3% of the population have adequate sanitation and 8.5% have access to adequate distribution of water...
To ease this burden, those of the Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad, proposes a framework of reflection, and to an awareness of the issue for a lot of people. Topics covered during these discussions, were among others: E-health in Haiti: from theory to practice with a video presentation; Training and exchanges from Canada (video presentation); medical education; response to medical emergencies : support...
As part of a program of distance learning developed for the benefit of the Medical School of Haiti; "Residents of Haitian hospitals, will be invited in hospitals in New York," promised the participants, knowing that the future of any society depends on its human resources, who must be protected.
According to Dr. Aldy Cartor, who spoke on the strategies of strengthening the emergency medical care in Haiti, "it is time that we define 'Haitian' strategies, able to save lives after a traffic accident", citing as an example the recent accidents on National Road #2, in the height of Morne Tapion, which caused extensive loss of life due to lack of emergency care.
ARTICLE - LIFELINE - 9-1-1 SYSTEM FOR CAP-HAITIEN
LIFELINE AMBULANCE SERVICE TO DESIGN 9-1-1 SYSTEM FOR HAITIAN CITY OF CAP-HAITIEN
(Boston CityBizlist) -
Company will donate four ambulances; train 25 doctors and nurses at Woburn facility
LifeLine Ambulance Service to design 9-1-1 system for Haitian city of Cap-Haitien
WOBURN, MA -- LifeLine Ambulance Service (www.lifelineamb.com ) has been asked to create the first-ever 9-1-1 emergency response system for the northern Haiti city of Cap-Haitien.
Currently, there is no 9-1-1 system in place in Northern Haiti, in fact, the streets are not even named; a fact which LifeLine executives learned during a recent training mission in that country. As part of the creation of this emergency response system, LifeLine will donate four ambulances to be used in Cap-Haitien; additionally, the company has invited 25 doctors and nurses to attend training at the LifeLine facility in Woburn, MA, later this year. The Haitian health care officials will remain in the United States for a month for training. They will then return to Haiti to train the rest of their community workers.
Cap-Haïtien is a city of 190,000 on the north coast of Haiti, near the town of Milot. The health care needs of the residents are served by Justinian University Hospital, a 250-bed teaching hospital operated by the Ministry of Health. The hospital is the largest healthcare provider in northern Haiti and serves an estimated 825,000 people. Residency programs include medicine, pediatrics, general surgery, obstetrics/gynecology, family practice, and schools for nurses and laboratory technicians.
LifeLine Ambulance Service CEO Brian J. Connor of Arlington, MA, and his company's Vice President of Clinical Services Ted White, recently spent a week in Northern Haiti, at the Hospital Sacre Coeur in Milot, and then at Justinian Hospital. Connor and White consulted with community health officials and provided training on pre-hospital care and emergency medicine to over 65 attendees consisting of doctors, nurses and Community Health Volunteer Workers from the northern section of Haiti.
During their weeklong training, one of the physicians participating in their training program invited them to visit Cap-Haitien and Justinian University Hospital. Connor and White were then invited to meet with Cap-Haitien hospital officials to discuss the possible implementation of a 9-1-1 system.
Connor said his firm has begun the work on creation of this program for Cap-Haitien, which he anticipates should be up and running within six to nine months. The phone number that residents of Cap-Haitien will use to activate the emergency system is 116, which has been assigned by the Ministry of Health.
LifeLine Ambulance Service has invested significant time and resources to improve the healthcare delivery system on the island of Haiti. Connor said that his company will provide the training and the ambulances to Cap-Haitien at no cost.
"You cannot help but be moved by the plight of the island of Haiti," said Connor, who said, "It is an incredible honor to be asked to develop the first 9-1-1 system for Northern Haiti, and to know that these efforts will make a real difference in the lives of the residents." He added, "Those of us who live in the United States have no idea how desperate the plight of Haitian residents can be. These first steps will help improve the health care delivery to the island."
About LifeLine Ambulance Service
LifeLine Ambulance Service (www.lifelineamb.com ) was founded in 2006 by Brian J. Connor, a 32-year industry veteran and former CEO of another ambulance firm in the Greater Boston area, and the former president of the Massachusetts Ambulance Association for the past 14 years. The company offers emergency and non-emergency Advanced Life Support and Basic Life Support, Chair Car, full service Limousine and coach bus transportation and a wide variety of other health care related services. LifeLine Ambulance Service operates from a new, state-of-the-art center that is staffed and operational 24 hours / 7 days per week / 365 days per year. The corporate facility is located at 11 State Street, Woburn, MA. LifeLine Ambulance Service maintains additional satellite locations in Arlington, Brighton, Framingham, Milford, Needham, Norwood, Peabody, Worcester, MA, and Bow, Exeter, Laconia and Merrimack, NH. The LifeLine management team has a combined 250 years' senior management experience in the EMS field. LifeLife Ambulance Service employs more than 275 people.
(Boston CityBizlist) -
Company will donate four ambulances; train 25 doctors and nurses at Woburn facility
LifeLine Ambulance Service to design 9-1-1 system for Haitian city of Cap-Haitien
WOBURN, MA -- LifeLine Ambulance Service (www.lifelineamb.com ) has been asked to create the first-ever 9-1-1 emergency response system for the northern Haiti city of Cap-Haitien.
Currently, there is no 9-1-1 system in place in Northern Haiti, in fact, the streets are not even named; a fact which LifeLine executives learned during a recent training mission in that country. As part of the creation of this emergency response system, LifeLine will donate four ambulances to be used in Cap-Haitien; additionally, the company has invited 25 doctors and nurses to attend training at the LifeLine facility in Woburn, MA, later this year. The Haitian health care officials will remain in the United States for a month for training. They will then return to Haiti to train the rest of their community workers.
Cap-Haïtien is a city of 190,000 on the north coast of Haiti, near the town of Milot. The health care needs of the residents are served by Justinian University Hospital, a 250-bed teaching hospital operated by the Ministry of Health. The hospital is the largest healthcare provider in northern Haiti and serves an estimated 825,000 people. Residency programs include medicine, pediatrics, general surgery, obstetrics/gynecology, family practice, and schools for nurses and laboratory technicians.
LifeLine Ambulance Service CEO Brian J. Connor of Arlington, MA, and his company's Vice President of Clinical Services Ted White, recently spent a week in Northern Haiti, at the Hospital Sacre Coeur in Milot, and then at Justinian Hospital. Connor and White consulted with community health officials and provided training on pre-hospital care and emergency medicine to over 65 attendees consisting of doctors, nurses and Community Health Volunteer Workers from the northern section of Haiti.
During their weeklong training, one of the physicians participating in their training program invited them to visit Cap-Haitien and Justinian University Hospital. Connor and White were then invited to meet with Cap-Haitien hospital officials to discuss the possible implementation of a 9-1-1 system.
Connor said his firm has begun the work on creation of this program for Cap-Haitien, which he anticipates should be up and running within six to nine months. The phone number that residents of Cap-Haitien will use to activate the emergency system is 116, which has been assigned by the Ministry of Health.
LifeLine Ambulance Service has invested significant time and resources to improve the healthcare delivery system on the island of Haiti. Connor said that his company will provide the training and the ambulances to Cap-Haitien at no cost.
"You cannot help but be moved by the plight of the island of Haiti," said Connor, who said, "It is an incredible honor to be asked to develop the first 9-1-1 system for Northern Haiti, and to know that these efforts will make a real difference in the lives of the residents." He added, "Those of us who live in the United States have no idea how desperate the plight of Haitian residents can be. These first steps will help improve the health care delivery to the island."
About LifeLine Ambulance Service
LifeLine Ambulance Service (www.lifelineamb.com ) was founded in 2006 by Brian J. Connor, a 32-year industry veteran and former CEO of another ambulance firm in the Greater Boston area, and the former president of the Massachusetts Ambulance Association for the past 14 years. The company offers emergency and non-emergency Advanced Life Support and Basic Life Support, Chair Car, full service Limousine and coach bus transportation and a wide variety of other health care related services. LifeLine Ambulance Service operates from a new, state-of-the-art center that is staffed and operational 24 hours / 7 days per week / 365 days per year. The corporate facility is located at 11 State Street, Woburn, MA. LifeLine Ambulance Service maintains additional satellite locations in Arlington, Brighton, Framingham, Milford, Needham, Norwood, Peabody, Worcester, MA, and Bow, Exeter, Laconia and Merrimack, NH. The LifeLine management team has a combined 250 years' senior management experience in the EMS field. LifeLife Ambulance Service employs more than 275 people.
ARTICLE - VACCINATIONS - 0-9 YRS.
IMMUNIZATION AND VITAMIN A FOR CHILDREN 0-9 YEARS
(Haiti Libre) -
The Presidency of the Republic announces the realization of two major intensive activities to improve child health.
It brings to the attention of the general population, and fathers and mothers in particular, that intensive activities for improving child health will be conducted from April 21 to May 5, 2012.
During these activities, children 0-9 years will be vaccinated against measles, rubella and polio, and will receive Vitamin A and deworming (Albendazole).
The Presidency of the Republic calls, not only the parents but also those responsible for schools and orphanages to contribute to the success of this activity whose ministries of Public Health and Population, National Education and Interior and Local Authorities contribute to the achievement.
The Office of the President, while renewing its firm will to work towards the improvement of living conditions of all Haitian children, relies on the cooperation of all the other partners involved in the reduction of the infant mortality rate to make of these intensive activities a true success.
(Haiti Libre) -
The Presidency of the Republic announces the realization of two major intensive activities to improve child health.
It brings to the attention of the general population, and fathers and mothers in particular, that intensive activities for improving child health will be conducted from April 21 to May 5, 2012.
During these activities, children 0-9 years will be vaccinated against measles, rubella and polio, and will receive Vitamin A and deworming (Albendazole).
The Presidency of the Republic calls, not only the parents but also those responsible for schools and orphanages to contribute to the success of this activity whose ministries of Public Health and Population, National Education and Interior and Local Authorities contribute to the achievement.
The Office of the President, while renewing its firm will to work towards the improvement of living conditions of all Haitian children, relies on the cooperation of all the other partners involved in the reduction of the infant mortality rate to make of these intensive activities a true success.
ARTICLES - VACCINES WILL SAVE THOUSANDS
CDC CHIEF: NEW VACCINES IN HAITI WILL SAVE TENS OF THOUSANDS
(NPR) - By Richard Knox
A campaign to introduce new childhood vaccines to Haiti will save tens of thousands of lives over the next decade, Dr. Thomas Frieden told Shots at the end of a two-day tour of the beleaguered country.
"This is an enormous step forward for Haiti," says Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "This is a big deal."
The crash campaign will start this weekend. Just 3 of the 10 vaccines being deployed in the next two years "will prevent 20,000 to 50,000 deaths among children in Haiti over the next decade," Frieden said before boarding a plane home.
Those three protect against Haemophilus influenzae B (Hib), rotavirus and pneumococcal pneumonia.
The last two will be rolled out in the next two years. The drive beginning this week will protect against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and Hib (in a 5-in-1 shot), along with polio and rubella.
In addition to these, Haiti is launching a "catch-up campaign" to vaccinate children against measles.
"That's quite important," Frieden says. On Thursday, the CDC will issue a report on measles outbreaks in the U.S. caused by travelers to Europe and other countries where measles is resurgent because of flagging immunization.
"It's quite common. The risk of measles being imported into Haiti is quite large," Frieden warns. "It's not there now, but if it were to get in, it could kill 20,000 kids in less than a year."
Frieden was part of a delegation to Haiti that included his boss, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. It was her first trip to Haiti.
The U.S. officials spent two days touring health facilities and holding press conferences that included Haitian President Michel Martelly and the country's health minister, Dr. Florence Duperval Guillaume. (Shortly after the press conference, Martelly suffered chest pains and flew to Miami for treatment of a pulmonary embolism.)
When the U.S. delegation arrived, a different vaccination campaign had just gotten started — a pilot project to immunize against cholera, which was introduced into Haiti 18 months ago.
Frieden has been decidedly skeptical about deploying a cholera vaccine in Haiti. He'd earlier pointed out that such a vaccine had never been used in an ongoing cholera epidemic, and that the global supply of cholera vaccine was limited.
The CDC has put the emphasis on cleaning up Haiti's water supply and providing decent sanitation as the best ways to combat cholera.
That's still the case, but this week Sebelius and Frieden were more open about the potential role of cholera vaccine.
On Monday, Sebelius said cholera vaccination and clean water sanitation was "not either/or," according to HHS spokesman Keith Maley.
"I don't think it's really a question of disagreement, but what makes the most sense to save the most lives ... how to get the job done," Frieden told Shots. "There is zero disagreement [about] the need to strengthen water and sanitation systems throughout Haiti. ... In addition, we should look carefully at the current and potential future role for cholera vaccine."
Frieden says it will take time to improve water and sanitation. "Nothing is easy in Haiti, I think that's safe to say," he says. "But we're optimistic. We've seen significant improvements in the past year."
(NPR) - By Richard Knox
A campaign to introduce new childhood vaccines to Haiti will save tens of thousands of lives over the next decade, Dr. Thomas Frieden told Shots at the end of a two-day tour of the beleaguered country.
"This is an enormous step forward for Haiti," says Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "This is a big deal."
The crash campaign will start this weekend. Just 3 of the 10 vaccines being deployed in the next two years "will prevent 20,000 to 50,000 deaths among children in Haiti over the next decade," Frieden said before boarding a plane home.
Those three protect against Haemophilus influenzae B (Hib), rotavirus and pneumococcal pneumonia.
The last two will be rolled out in the next two years. The drive beginning this week will protect against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and Hib (in a 5-in-1 shot), along with polio and rubella.
In addition to these, Haiti is launching a "catch-up campaign" to vaccinate children against measles.
"That's quite important," Frieden says. On Thursday, the CDC will issue a report on measles outbreaks in the U.S. caused by travelers to Europe and other countries where measles is resurgent because of flagging immunization.
"It's quite common. The risk of measles being imported into Haiti is quite large," Frieden warns. "It's not there now, but if it were to get in, it could kill 20,000 kids in less than a year."
Frieden was part of a delegation to Haiti that included his boss, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. It was her first trip to Haiti.
The U.S. officials spent two days touring health facilities and holding press conferences that included Haitian President Michel Martelly and the country's health minister, Dr. Florence Duperval Guillaume. (Shortly after the press conference, Martelly suffered chest pains and flew to Miami for treatment of a pulmonary embolism.)
When the U.S. delegation arrived, a different vaccination campaign had just gotten started — a pilot project to immunize against cholera, which was introduced into Haiti 18 months ago.
Frieden has been decidedly skeptical about deploying a cholera vaccine in Haiti. He'd earlier pointed out that such a vaccine had never been used in an ongoing cholera epidemic, and that the global supply of cholera vaccine was limited.
The CDC has put the emphasis on cleaning up Haiti's water supply and providing decent sanitation as the best ways to combat cholera.
That's still the case, but this week Sebelius and Frieden were more open about the potential role of cholera vaccine.
On Monday, Sebelius said cholera vaccination and clean water sanitation was "not either/or," according to HHS spokesman Keith Maley.
"I don't think it's really a question of disagreement, but what makes the most sense to save the most lives ... how to get the job done," Frieden told Shots. "There is zero disagreement [about] the need to strengthen water and sanitation systems throughout Haiti. ... In addition, we should look carefully at the current and potential future role for cholera vaccine."
Frieden says it will take time to improve water and sanitation. "Nothing is easy in Haiti, I think that's safe to say," he says. "But we're optimistic. We've seen significant improvements in the past year."
ARTICLE - VACCINATIONS - MILLIONS OF CHILDREN
MILLIONS OF CHILDREN IN HAITI TO RECEIVE LIFE-SAVING VACCINES
(Miami Herald) - By Jacqueline Charles
Haiti launched a countrywide vaccination campaign to immunize millions of children against childhood killers.
More children die in Haiti before reaching their fifth birthdays than anywhere else in the Americas. And more Haitian children lack all of their shots than in most countries.
Seeking to change these grim statistics, Haiti is ramping up vaccinations against measles, rubella, and polio as part of an intensive countrywide immunization campaign that kicks off Saturday. The launch coincides with the World Health Organization’s Immunization Week, a global effort to underscore the importance of immunizations.
“Our mission is to save lives and particularly to save the lives of our children,” said Dr. Florence Duperval Guillaume, Haiti’s health minister. “Children today will be the adults of tomorrow, and they will be the ones entrusted with the future of the country.”
With less than 60 percent of Haiti’s tiniest citizens completely immunized, Guillaume has set an ambitious goal. She wants to raise the number to at least 90 percent, especially for children under 5, against measles and polio. Haiti has been declared polio free since 2001, she said, but to get accredited the country needs to hit the 90 percent mark; not an easy task in a poverty-stricken nation where culturally parents don’t always see the benefits of taking children to a doctor unless they are sick and most of the population lack access to basic health services.
But where others see challenges, Guillaume sees opportunities.
“For me health, is an investment,” she said. “This is how I approach it. The more results you get, the better your chances of having a healthy population.”
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius agrees. Sebelius, recently spent two days in Haiti, most of it with Guillaume at her side. As she took a tour of the Eliazar Germain hospital in Port-au-Prince, she welcomed the increased focus on childhood vaccinations, including Haiti becoming the final nation in the Western Hemisphere to provide the pentavalent vaccine. A single shot, the vaccine offers protection against five childhood diseases: diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B, and Haemophilus influenza Type b or (Hib), which causes bacterial meningitis. At least two of the five are among the world’s leading childhood killers.
“It’s important to make sure that children have these immunities going forward,” Sebelius said days later while touring another health center, this one in Miami. The Borinquen Heath Center is a federally funded facility, and 40 percent of its patients are Haitian, many of them survivors of the country’s devastating January 2010 earthquake.
As Sebelius commended Haiti’s vaccination plan, she said Guillaume is a physician who “is very focused on measurable, achievable outcomes that will build the health of the people of Haiti and we’re eager to work with her.”
The pentavalent vaccine campaign is expected to roll out next month. At about $9 per child, the vaccine is being provided to Haiti through the GAVI Alliance, a public-private health initiative. GAVI will provide Haiti with $2.15 million worth of pentavalent for 2012 as part of $7.5 million in pentavalent commitments in the coming years.
The U.S. Center for Disease Control has agreed to fund Haiti’s $177,500 contribution toward the vaccine for this year, said Jonathan Stern, GAVI Alliance spokesman.
Stern said Haiti also has been approved for two other children vaccines next year, Rotavirus and pneumococcal.
Guillaume said the health ministry’s nationwide campaign will be focused on informing parents about the importance of vaccinations, registering children to keep a record of their shots, and employing youth. The idea is to use the youth to do outreach, while also educating them to the importance of vaccinations.
“They will be parents one day,” she said.
In addition to its children vaccination campaign, Haiti last week began vaccinating tens of thousands of people against cholera. A national bioethics committee approved the pilot vaccination program against the waterborne disease. Haitians began receiving the first of two doses of the oral vaccine, Shanchol, last week.
The target is 100,000 Haitians or 1 percent of the population living in vulnerable slums near the capital and a rice-growing community near St. Marc, where the epidemic first broke out. The cholera vaccinations are being administered by Boston-based Partners In Health and GHESKIO, a Port-au-Prince health center.
Since its initial outbreak in late 2010, cholera has infected more than 530,000 Haitians and killed about 7,040. Since March, 77 Haitians have died from the disease, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Friday.
Sebelius, who met with foreign donors while in Haiti, said cholera and other challenges show that “continued investment does make good sense.”
(Miami Herald) - By Jacqueline Charles
Haiti launched a countrywide vaccination campaign to immunize millions of children against childhood killers.
More children die in Haiti before reaching their fifth birthdays than anywhere else in the Americas. And more Haitian children lack all of their shots than in most countries.
Seeking to change these grim statistics, Haiti is ramping up vaccinations against measles, rubella, and polio as part of an intensive countrywide immunization campaign that kicks off Saturday. The launch coincides with the World Health Organization’s Immunization Week, a global effort to underscore the importance of immunizations.
“Our mission is to save lives and particularly to save the lives of our children,” said Dr. Florence Duperval Guillaume, Haiti’s health minister. “Children today will be the adults of tomorrow, and they will be the ones entrusted with the future of the country.”
With less than 60 percent of Haiti’s tiniest citizens completely immunized, Guillaume has set an ambitious goal. She wants to raise the number to at least 90 percent, especially for children under 5, against measles and polio. Haiti has been declared polio free since 2001, she said, but to get accredited the country needs to hit the 90 percent mark; not an easy task in a poverty-stricken nation where culturally parents don’t always see the benefits of taking children to a doctor unless they are sick and most of the population lack access to basic health services.
But where others see challenges, Guillaume sees opportunities.
“For me health, is an investment,” she said. “This is how I approach it. The more results you get, the better your chances of having a healthy population.”
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius agrees. Sebelius, recently spent two days in Haiti, most of it with Guillaume at her side. As she took a tour of the Eliazar Germain hospital in Port-au-Prince, she welcomed the increased focus on childhood vaccinations, including Haiti becoming the final nation in the Western Hemisphere to provide the pentavalent vaccine. A single shot, the vaccine offers protection against five childhood diseases: diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B, and Haemophilus influenza Type b or (Hib), which causes bacterial meningitis. At least two of the five are among the world’s leading childhood killers.
“It’s important to make sure that children have these immunities going forward,” Sebelius said days later while touring another health center, this one in Miami. The Borinquen Heath Center is a federally funded facility, and 40 percent of its patients are Haitian, many of them survivors of the country’s devastating January 2010 earthquake.
As Sebelius commended Haiti’s vaccination plan, she said Guillaume is a physician who “is very focused on measurable, achievable outcomes that will build the health of the people of Haiti and we’re eager to work with her.”
The pentavalent vaccine campaign is expected to roll out next month. At about $9 per child, the vaccine is being provided to Haiti through the GAVI Alliance, a public-private health initiative. GAVI will provide Haiti with $2.15 million worth of pentavalent for 2012 as part of $7.5 million in pentavalent commitments in the coming years.
The U.S. Center for Disease Control has agreed to fund Haiti’s $177,500 contribution toward the vaccine for this year, said Jonathan Stern, GAVI Alliance spokesman.
Stern said Haiti also has been approved for two other children vaccines next year, Rotavirus and pneumococcal.
Guillaume said the health ministry’s nationwide campaign will be focused on informing parents about the importance of vaccinations, registering children to keep a record of their shots, and employing youth. The idea is to use the youth to do outreach, while also educating them to the importance of vaccinations.
“They will be parents one day,” she said.
In addition to its children vaccination campaign, Haiti last week began vaccinating tens of thousands of people against cholera. A national bioethics committee approved the pilot vaccination program against the waterborne disease. Haitians began receiving the first of two doses of the oral vaccine, Shanchol, last week.
The target is 100,000 Haitians or 1 percent of the population living in vulnerable slums near the capital and a rice-growing community near St. Marc, where the epidemic first broke out. The cholera vaccinations are being administered by Boston-based Partners In Health and GHESKIO, a Port-au-Prince health center.
Since its initial outbreak in late 2010, cholera has infected more than 530,000 Haitians and killed about 7,040. Since March, 77 Haitians have died from the disease, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Friday.
Sebelius, who met with foreign donors while in Haiti, said cholera and other challenges show that “continued investment does make good sense.”
ARTICLE - DISABILITIES - FREE HEALTH CARE
FREE HEALTH CARE FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITES
(Haiti Libre) -
The Office of the Secretary of State for the Integration of Disabled Persons (BSEIPH) proceeded Thursday to the signing of an agreement, at St. James Hospital in Martissant with leaders of the organization "Development of Health Activities in Haiti" (DASH), which works in the field of health in Haiti. The agreement aims to provide free medical care in the network of hospitals run by DASH, to nearly 500 people living with disabilities.
In his speech for the occasion, Gérald Oriol Jr., Secretary of State for the Integration of Disabled Persons, stated the obligation of the Haitian State to provide adequate health care to people with disabilities, and thanked the DASH team for this commitment "This program can serve as an example, and a model to follow to arrive one day at having free and accessible health care for all citizen," declared Oriol.
In addition to free health care, the beneficiaries of this agreement, members of associations regularly registered at BSEIPH will have access to community pharmacies of DASH and be able to obtain generic drugs at a cost of 100 gourdes for whatsoever medication.
The access to the laboratory community of DASH is also provided in this agreement. Xrays, sonographic examinations, paraclinical examinations, and emergency care will be offered to the disabled at preferential costs.
DASH is also committed to providing these people, preventive health services in the areas of HIV\AIDS, family planning and health education. In addition, all children under 6 years age of program beneficiaries, will have access to consultations and free vaccinations at the medical centers of DASH.
Present at the signing, Dr. Ronald Laroche, Director of the DASH organization, staff members of BSEIPH and DASH, representatives of associations working in the disability field, and beneficiaries of the program. Responsibles of the pharmaceutical agency PROPHALAB, and the organization FHADIMAC, also attended the signing ceremony. PROPHALAB has in addition donated a first batch of medicines for people with disabilities as part of this project.
In Haiti almost 10% of the population lives with a disability and only 5% of this group have access to health care.
(Haiti Libre) -
The Office of the Secretary of State for the Integration of Disabled Persons (BSEIPH) proceeded Thursday to the signing of an agreement, at St. James Hospital in Martissant with leaders of the organization "Development of Health Activities in Haiti" (DASH), which works in the field of health in Haiti. The agreement aims to provide free medical care in the network of hospitals run by DASH, to nearly 500 people living with disabilities.
In his speech for the occasion, Gérald Oriol Jr., Secretary of State for the Integration of Disabled Persons, stated the obligation of the Haitian State to provide adequate health care to people with disabilities, and thanked the DASH team for this commitment "This program can serve as an example, and a model to follow to arrive one day at having free and accessible health care for all citizen," declared Oriol.
In addition to free health care, the beneficiaries of this agreement, members of associations regularly registered at BSEIPH will have access to community pharmacies of DASH and be able to obtain generic drugs at a cost of 100 gourdes for whatsoever medication.
The access to the laboratory community of DASH is also provided in this agreement. Xrays, sonographic examinations, paraclinical examinations, and emergency care will be offered to the disabled at preferential costs.
DASH is also committed to providing these people, preventive health services in the areas of HIV\AIDS, family planning and health education. In addition, all children under 6 years age of program beneficiaries, will have access to consultations and free vaccinations at the medical centers of DASH.
Present at the signing, Dr. Ronald Laroche, Director of the DASH organization, staff members of BSEIPH and DASH, representatives of associations working in the disability field, and beneficiaries of the program. Responsibles of the pharmaceutical agency PROPHALAB, and the organization FHADIMAC, also attended the signing ceremony. PROPHALAB has in addition donated a first batch of medicines for people with disabilities as part of this project.
In Haiti almost 10% of the population lives with a disability and only 5% of this group have access to health care.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
ARTICLE - HAITI'S DISABLED - GOOD INTENTIONS
GOOD INTENTIONS BRING MIXED RESULTS FOR HAITI'S DISABLED PEOPLE
(MedicalXpress) - By London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
A new evaluation by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine of the physical rehabilitation response after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, finds that many hands didn't always make light work.
Thousands of people became disabled during and after the 2010 earthquake, and physical rehabilitation interventions were crucial to the emergency response. The rehabilitation sector alone involved 125 organisations including UN agencies, government, international and Haitian NGOs.
With a strong focus on relationships between the 125 rehabilitation organisations involved, the study finds that effective coordination was challenged by top-down implementation with little respect for existing national structures or consideration of local practitioners, failure to observe international standards, and the sheer diversity of the collaboration.
The report is critical of the failure to hold coordination meetings in accessible locations or in local languages, which effectively prevented participation by local government and NGOs. Due to such weak connections, Haitian authorities and civil society felt excluded. The short-term contract bases of international rehabilitation teams and a lack of standardised record keeping compromised the transfer of useable knowledge to Haitian health services, while instability resulted in out-migration of Haitian professionals, as free provision by international volunteer teams usurped demand for local services.
Long-term impact was sometimes sacrificed in favour of short-term headlines and funding concerns, as the cluster mechanism focused on day-to-day activities, neglecting the building of a common vision for the sector. The report suggests that actors should start building the future rehabilitation system as soon as the acute emergency response ends.
The study also recognises positive outcomes. Prior to 2010, prosthetic and orthotic (P&O) and in-patient rehabilitation services were very weak in Haiti, while treatment for spinal cord injured patients was virtually non-existent. Subsequent to the disaster response, the range of rehabilitation services is significantly expanded in Haiti, including the introduction of Haiti's first spinal cord injury services. Despite slow initial progress, the rehabilitation sector moved much more quickly than the health sector in terms of bringing Haitian actors on board, and handing over lead roles to national authorities, which bodes well for the sustainability of the service going forward.
(MedicalXpress) - By London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
A new evaluation by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine of the physical rehabilitation response after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, finds that many hands didn't always make light work.
Thousands of people became disabled during and after the 2010 earthquake, and physical rehabilitation interventions were crucial to the emergency response. The rehabilitation sector alone involved 125 organisations including UN agencies, government, international and Haitian NGOs.
With a strong focus on relationships between the 125 rehabilitation organisations involved, the study finds that effective coordination was challenged by top-down implementation with little respect for existing national structures or consideration of local practitioners, failure to observe international standards, and the sheer diversity of the collaboration.
The report is critical of the failure to hold coordination meetings in accessible locations or in local languages, which effectively prevented participation by local government and NGOs. Due to such weak connections, Haitian authorities and civil society felt excluded. The short-term contract bases of international rehabilitation teams and a lack of standardised record keeping compromised the transfer of useable knowledge to Haitian health services, while instability resulted in out-migration of Haitian professionals, as free provision by international volunteer teams usurped demand for local services.
Long-term impact was sometimes sacrificed in favour of short-term headlines and funding concerns, as the cluster mechanism focused on day-to-day activities, neglecting the building of a common vision for the sector. The report suggests that actors should start building the future rehabilitation system as soon as the acute emergency response ends.
The study also recognises positive outcomes. Prior to 2010, prosthetic and orthotic (P&O) and in-patient rehabilitation services were very weak in Haiti, while treatment for spinal cord injured patients was virtually non-existent. Subsequent to the disaster response, the range of rehabilitation services is significantly expanded in Haiti, including the introduction of Haiti's first spinal cord injury services. Despite slow initial progress, the rehabilitation sector moved much more quickly than the health sector in terms of bringing Haitian actors on board, and handing over lead roles to national authorities, which bodes well for the sustainability of the service going forward.
ARTICLE - MEDISEND - ICC - HOSPITAL
MEDISEND AND INTERNATIONAL CHILD CARE PARTNER TO BENEFIT HAITIAN CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL
(PRWeb) -
The two organizations are working together to help transform the future of healthcare for children in Haiti by providing Grace Children's Hospital with a desperately-needed biomedical repair technician equipped with the tools needed to repair and maintain life-saving equipment. .
A partnership between MediSend and International Child Care will ensure that children in Haiti will have access to quality medical care.
Each year, International Child Care's Grace Children's Hospital in Port au Prince receives thousands of children who are suffering from TB, HIV and other diseases. On January 10, 2010 the earth under the hospital shook for forty seconds and aftershocks continued for weeks.
The hospital was severely damaged - almost destroyed. Miraculously, the Grace staff and volunteers pulled together so that the hospital has never missed a day serving patients, and thanks to the tireless efforts of International Child Care, the hospital is being rebuilt. However, like so many hospitals in developing countries, the medical equipment has had no one to repair or maintain it, until now.
Stanley Poulard is a Haitian technician trainee currently attending MediSend's Biomedical Repair Training Program™. Poulard arrived at MediSend's Elisabeth Dahan Humanitarian Center in Dallas, Texas in January. He will return to his home in Port au Prince in June to develop a desperately needed biomedical equipment repair laboratory at Grace Children's Hospital.
The hospital will also be equipped with a MediSend Mobile Biomedical Equipment Test and Repair Kit ™, the most comprehensive mobile lab of its kind, containing the tools and supplies Stanley will need to successfully support Grace's mission of healing Haitian children.
"I am grateful to MediSend and International Child Care for this opportunity," says Poulard, formerly an auto mechanic in Haiti, "Grace Children's Hospital is a place that families know and trust. I am proud to be a future part of their work, thanks to my education at MediSend. I will return to Haiti knowing that my new skills and training will mean that families feel secure that their children can be healed."
Since 2006 MediSend's intensive Biomedical Repair Training Program™ has returned BMET certified biomedical repair technicians to sixteen countries around the world. MediSend's unique model of education, training and equipping biomedical technicians means that thousands of children across Haiti will have access to reliable, quality health care.
About MediSend:
Medisend International is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that provides innovative programs and solutions that strengthen community healthcare in developing countries, including professional training, certification, and equipping of biomedical repair technicians, and the distribution of medical supplies and biomedical equipment. MediSend's Global Education Center and distribution facility are located in the Elisabeth Dahan Humanitarian Center, MediSend's headquarters in Dallas, Texas. For more information on MediSend's mission and work in the developing world, go to http://www.medisend.org
About International Child Care International:
Child Care is a Christian health development organization. Operating in Haiti since 1967 and in the Dominican Republic since 1988, ICC is working to change the conditions of poverty that impact health and well-being.
(PRWeb) -
The two organizations are working together to help transform the future of healthcare for children in Haiti by providing Grace Children's Hospital with a desperately-needed biomedical repair technician equipped with the tools needed to repair and maintain life-saving equipment. .
A partnership between MediSend and International Child Care will ensure that children in Haiti will have access to quality medical care.
Each year, International Child Care's Grace Children's Hospital in Port au Prince receives thousands of children who are suffering from TB, HIV and other diseases. On January 10, 2010 the earth under the hospital shook for forty seconds and aftershocks continued for weeks.
The hospital was severely damaged - almost destroyed. Miraculously, the Grace staff and volunteers pulled together so that the hospital has never missed a day serving patients, and thanks to the tireless efforts of International Child Care, the hospital is being rebuilt. However, like so many hospitals in developing countries, the medical equipment has had no one to repair or maintain it, until now.
Stanley Poulard is a Haitian technician trainee currently attending MediSend's Biomedical Repair Training Program™. Poulard arrived at MediSend's Elisabeth Dahan Humanitarian Center in Dallas, Texas in January. He will return to his home in Port au Prince in June to develop a desperately needed biomedical equipment repair laboratory at Grace Children's Hospital.
The hospital will also be equipped with a MediSend Mobile Biomedical Equipment Test and Repair Kit ™, the most comprehensive mobile lab of its kind, containing the tools and supplies Stanley will need to successfully support Grace's mission of healing Haitian children.
"I am grateful to MediSend and International Child Care for this opportunity," says Poulard, formerly an auto mechanic in Haiti, "Grace Children's Hospital is a place that families know and trust. I am proud to be a future part of their work, thanks to my education at MediSend. I will return to Haiti knowing that my new skills and training will mean that families feel secure that their children can be healed."
Since 2006 MediSend's intensive Biomedical Repair Training Program™ has returned BMET certified biomedical repair technicians to sixteen countries around the world. MediSend's unique model of education, training and equipping biomedical technicians means that thousands of children across Haiti will have access to reliable, quality health care.
About MediSend:
Medisend International is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that provides innovative programs and solutions that strengthen community healthcare in developing countries, including professional training, certification, and equipping of biomedical repair technicians, and the distribution of medical supplies and biomedical equipment. MediSend's Global Education Center and distribution facility are located in the Elisabeth Dahan Humanitarian Center, MediSend's headquarters in Dallas, Texas. For more information on MediSend's mission and work in the developing world, go to http://www.medisend.org
About International Child Care International:
Child Care is a Christian health development organization. Operating in Haiti since 1967 and in the Dominican Republic since 1988, ICC is working to change the conditions of poverty that impact health and well-being.
ARTICLE - VACCINATION CAMPAIGN
U.S. - HAITI KICK OFF VACCINATION CAMPAIGNS
(TIME) - By Trenton Daniel (AP)
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Haiti, the United States and international partners are launching a nationwide vaccination campaign in the Caribbean country that seeks to curb or prevent infectious diseases, health officials said Monday.
On a two-day visit to Haiti, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the effort to vaccinate Haitians against such diseases as diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough is critical because the country is especially vulnerable to diseases brought from outside.
"We know the population in Haiti remains at risk for cases imported from other parts of the world because of low vaccine coverage rates here for both polio and measles rubella among infants," Sebelius told reporters following a tour of the Eliazar Germain hospital in Haiti's capital. "That's why an important part of the reconstruction efforts after the January 2010 earthquake response was rebuilding the childhood immunization infrastructure."
Immunization rates are low in Haiti. Coverage for measles and polios for 1-year olds, for example, is only a little more than half of the country's 10 million inhabitants, according to the World Health Organization.
And the ability for infectious diseases to spread quickly in Haiti is evident. A cholera epidemic has ravaged the country since it surfaced a few months after the 2010 earthquake and gone on to kill more than 7,000 people and sicken 530,000 more, according to Haitian health officials. Scientific studies say a unit of peacekeepers from Nepal inadvertently brought the disease from their homeland, where the disease is endemic.
The campaign launched Monday is ambitious and, according to Health Minister Dr. Florence Duperval Guillaume, seeks to vaccinate 90 percent of Haiti's youth population. The vaccines will be free, she added.
The vaccines aim to immunize children for measles rubella and polio and other diseases, and immunization will be staggered. Vaccination for measles rubella and polio will begin Saturday.
The other vaccine to be introduced Monday is pentavalent, which is used to prevent diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenza type b, a bacterium that causes meningitis and pneumonia. It also began today but will be broadly available in June.
The campaign will be supported in part by the GAVI Alliance, a group of international health organizations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. In 2012, the GAVI Alliance will provide Haiti with $ 7.5 million for the pentavalent vaccine in Haiti. The Haitian government will contribute $177,500, which is being paid for by the CDC. GAVI also provided $100,000 to the Haitian government to train health workers.
The CDC is paying another $3.5 million — $2.5 million for the measles rubella campaign and $1 million for the polio one.
The campaign is part of a broader effort announced this month to vaccinate Haitians.
The Boston-based Partners in Health and the Haitian-run Gheskio Center have teamed up to distribute a two-dose, oral vaccine for cholera to as many as 50,000 Haitians in the capital and in a rice-farming community in the countryside. In the end, the groups plan to vaccinate 100,000 people, or 1 percent of Haiti's population.
Distribution of the Shanchol cholera vaccine was supposed to begin in January but was delayed because an ethics committee in the Health Ministry expressed concerns that the groups wanted to use the vaccine as a research project rather than as a pilot project. It wasn't until last week that the Health Ministry approved the roll out.
(TIME) - By Trenton Daniel (AP)
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Haiti, the United States and international partners are launching a nationwide vaccination campaign in the Caribbean country that seeks to curb or prevent infectious diseases, health officials said Monday.
On a two-day visit to Haiti, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the effort to vaccinate Haitians against such diseases as diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough is critical because the country is especially vulnerable to diseases brought from outside.
"We know the population in Haiti remains at risk for cases imported from other parts of the world because of low vaccine coverage rates here for both polio and measles rubella among infants," Sebelius told reporters following a tour of the Eliazar Germain hospital in Haiti's capital. "That's why an important part of the reconstruction efforts after the January 2010 earthquake response was rebuilding the childhood immunization infrastructure."
Immunization rates are low in Haiti. Coverage for measles and polios for 1-year olds, for example, is only a little more than half of the country's 10 million inhabitants, according to the World Health Organization.
And the ability for infectious diseases to spread quickly in Haiti is evident. A cholera epidemic has ravaged the country since it surfaced a few months after the 2010 earthquake and gone on to kill more than 7,000 people and sicken 530,000 more, according to Haitian health officials. Scientific studies say a unit of peacekeepers from Nepal inadvertently brought the disease from their homeland, where the disease is endemic.
The campaign launched Monday is ambitious and, according to Health Minister Dr. Florence Duperval Guillaume, seeks to vaccinate 90 percent of Haiti's youth population. The vaccines will be free, she added.
The vaccines aim to immunize children for measles rubella and polio and other diseases, and immunization will be staggered. Vaccination for measles rubella and polio will begin Saturday.
The other vaccine to be introduced Monday is pentavalent, which is used to prevent diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenza type b, a bacterium that causes meningitis and pneumonia. It also began today but will be broadly available in June.
The campaign will be supported in part by the GAVI Alliance, a group of international health organizations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. In 2012, the GAVI Alliance will provide Haiti with $ 7.5 million for the pentavalent vaccine in Haiti. The Haitian government will contribute $177,500, which is being paid for by the CDC. GAVI also provided $100,000 to the Haitian government to train health workers.
The CDC is paying another $3.5 million — $2.5 million for the measles rubella campaign and $1 million for the polio one.
The campaign is part of a broader effort announced this month to vaccinate Haitians.
The Boston-based Partners in Health and the Haitian-run Gheskio Center have teamed up to distribute a two-dose, oral vaccine for cholera to as many as 50,000 Haitians in the capital and in a rice-farming community in the countryside. In the end, the groups plan to vaccinate 100,000 people, or 1 percent of Haiti's population.
Distribution of the Shanchol cholera vaccine was supposed to begin in January but was delayed because an ethics committee in the Health Ministry expressed concerns that the groups wanted to use the vaccine as a research project rather than as a pilot project. It wasn't until last week that the Health Ministry approved the roll out.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
ARTICLE - BACK TO LIFE AFTER 7 DAYS?
CHRISTELLA BACK TO LIFE 7 DAYS AFTER HER DEATH!
(Haiti Libre) -
After spending 7 days in a morgue of Port-au-Prince, Christella Hector, a teenage girl, aged 16 has regained life and is with her parents on Friday, April 13, 2012, in the locality of Pasquete, about 3 kilometers from the town of Jacmel. According to her parents, Christella had died last Saturday, April 7, after several days of hospitalization.
A Student of 6th fundamental year, Christella Hector, explained to journalists; "It was exactly noon, Saturday, April 7, when I felt not in my normal state, I started saying conflicting words just before losing consciousness [...] I heard only the voice of my mother crying; however my tongue was swallowed up in my mouth, and I could not talk..."
Always according to her testimony, she would have "woken up" Friday, April 13 in the morning among the corpses in the morgue before fleeing...
In the afternoon, the news has caused some panic in Jacmel, since the announcement of her death was still aired on radio stations of the city. Dozens of curious people, were massed in front of the house of Christella's parents, to see with their eyes this amazing back to life story...
Joseph Elimène, Christella's mother, told reporters that her daughter had not been struck by a natural death, pointing the finger on an individual well known in their entourage, who had tried to kill her daughter mystically... "Since the death of Christella I have accused someone publicly of having caused the death of Christella...", adding that she had handed its accusations in the hands of the justice of Jacmel.
Christella stated that her dream is to become a nun and to serve the world. For several months she has followed seminars with nuns and priests in order to realize her dream.
Christella was really dead? Can we attribute this event to a miracle? Questions unanswered for now. Meanwhile, Christella, promises to become a true disciple of God, but she expresses concern that her comrades are afraid of her, after this strange event...
(Haiti Libre) -
After spending 7 days in a morgue of Port-au-Prince, Christella Hector, a teenage girl, aged 16 has regained life and is with her parents on Friday, April 13, 2012, in the locality of Pasquete, about 3 kilometers from the town of Jacmel. According to her parents, Christella had died last Saturday, April 7, after several days of hospitalization.
A Student of 6th fundamental year, Christella Hector, explained to journalists; "It was exactly noon, Saturday, April 7, when I felt not in my normal state, I started saying conflicting words just before losing consciousness [...] I heard only the voice of my mother crying; however my tongue was swallowed up in my mouth, and I could not talk..."
Always according to her testimony, she would have "woken up" Friday, April 13 in the morning among the corpses in the morgue before fleeing...
In the afternoon, the news has caused some panic in Jacmel, since the announcement of her death was still aired on radio stations of the city. Dozens of curious people, were massed in front of the house of Christella's parents, to see with their eyes this amazing back to life story...
Joseph Elimène, Christella's mother, told reporters that her daughter had not been struck by a natural death, pointing the finger on an individual well known in their entourage, who had tried to kill her daughter mystically... "Since the death of Christella I have accused someone publicly of having caused the death of Christella...", adding that she had handed its accusations in the hands of the justice of Jacmel.
Christella stated that her dream is to become a nun and to serve the world. For several months she has followed seminars with nuns and priests in order to realize her dream.
Christella was really dead? Can we attribute this event to a miracle? Questions unanswered for now. Meanwhile, Christella, promises to become a true disciple of God, but she expresses concern that her comrades are afraid of her, after this strange event...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)