MFP
Haitian Health Initiative
Haiti is one
hour from Miami and yet it is the poorest country in the Western
Hemisphere. A succession of corrupt leaders and misguided interventions
by foreign governments have left the country bankrupt and lacking
an infrastructure to support Haiti's 8 million inhabitants. Entrenched
poverty and near universal unemployment has created a hopeless
situation for most Haitians.The health statistics for Haiti are
sobering:
-
15% of children never reach the age
of five.
-
Only 30% of children are vaccinated.
-
Preventable diseases (malnutrition, diarrhea and pneumonia)
are the major causes of child death.
-
Haitian women have the highest maternal mortality rate in the
Americas.
-
6000 Haitian children will die of AIDS this year.
The
Situation in Gros-Morne
The town of Gros-Morne is 175 kilometers north of Port-au-Prince
in the northern Artibonite province. Twenty-seven thousand people
live in the town and an additional 100,000 people live in the eight
surrounding districts. As in other parts of rural Haiti, there is
no public water, sewerage facilities, electricity or reliable way
to communicate with the rest of the country. Dirt roads, to and
from the town are in poor condition, and are impassable in the rainy
season.
There is a regional hospital in Gros-Morne (the Alma Mater Hospital),
that consists of five small, single-story, cinder block buildings
with open windows and tin roofs. The local Catholic Church operates
the hospital as well as a clinic (dispensaire) in each of the eight
districts. Two part-time physicians and a small number of poorly
trained community health aides attend to the 127,000 inhabitants
of greater Gros-Morne.
The
MFP Health Initiative
MFP is in the early stages of planning a comprehensive assitance
program to Gros-Morne. We are working with the local Catholic Church,
The Alma Mater Hospital and community leaders to address the following
health issues.
A safe and abundant water supply. The
single improvement that would have the greatest impact on the social
and medical crisis in Gros-Morne would be a an abundant and readily
accessible, potable water supply. A recent MFP water and sanitation
survey found that each person used 9.5 liters of water per day,
considerably lower than the minimum World Health Organization standard
for emergency situations (e.g. refugee camps). More ominous, 41%
of all water consumed was drawn from the local river which is contaminated
by human and domestic animal excrement.
A health monitoring system for Gros- Morne.
The first step in designing a comprehensive health plan for Gros-Morne
will be the initiation of a system to monitor important health indicators
(e.g.childhoodhood morbidity and mortality, vaccination rates, infectious
disease incidence rates, malnutrition rates, birth and maternal
mortality rates, pre-natal clinic visits and HIV infection rates.
A hospital based clinical laboratory and radiology facility.
The
two year plan includes fundraising to support the construction of
a diagnostic radiological facility and the development of a state-of
-the art clinical laboratory, including the training of laboratory
personnel.
Community health education. The backbone
of the community
health system are the community heath workers and the nurses who
supervise them. MFP has organized a series of intensive courses
using experts from Haiti and the United States to improve the health
care delivered by the community health workers. Workshops in emergency
medicine, midwifery, psychiatric problems and dermatology are planned.
|
