By Mere | THHT Board Member
We're pleased to announce that one of our partners, the Haiti Hospital Appeal, recently received some UK Government funding to implement a major new community health program in North Haiti. This program will include identifying high risk pregnant women in the community through prenatal care, and ensuring they are referred appropriately to the hospital for specialist emergency medical support. This will include working with 80 Traditional Birth Attendants, supporting a local ambulance service, and many other activities.
As you can imagine, whilst the hospital is incredibly happy about this new grant, it has also raised the concern that departments like the neonatal intensive care unit are likely to receive even more patients in the coming months, as more babies get referred from the community for care. Since last August the neonatal unit has cared for 321 babies, and this number is now likely to increase. As one example of the life saving care being offered...of those 321 babies, 87 of them had jaundice, a condition which if untreated can leave a baby brain damaged and disabled for the rest of their life. Jaundice is easy to treat, and with simple phototherapy, a babies life can be saved! Thanks to your support, the neonatal unit offers phototherapy to babies everyday.
However, whilst the demand increases, the financial support needed to sustain this work unfortunately remains a challenge, which is why we need your support now more than ever.
We want to ensure that this neonatal intensive care unit can remain open, so it can continue supporting this increased demand, but we need your help to achieve this. Could you share this critical project with your friends, family or colleagues through Facebook, twitter or e-mail? The more people who hear about it, the more babies we can support! We would also be very grateful if you'd consider making another donation towards this work. We believe every baby deserves the right start to life, and this unit is actively saving lives every day. Thanks for your continued support of The Haiti Health Trust.
Links:
By The Haiti Health Trust | THHT
By M. Hutchison | Communications Coordinator
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
