Help Build a Clinic for 35K people in Dondon Haiti

In the US we take our healthcare for granted. We know if we get sick or have an emergency we have the availability of doctors and hospitals. Even if we cannot afford to pay we have the availability of emergency care. In most of Haiti the situation is much different. Even if your town has a hospital or clinic, transportation to it may not be available or affordable. And riding on a motorcycle taxi when sick may not be possible. Many private clinics will not treat you without payment up front. For reasons like this Haitians continue to suffer from preventable and treatable diseases. Routine childhood vaccination rates are estimated to be about 64%

HVF is attempting to remedy this situation in Dondon. With the help of our donors we are closer to realizing our vision. Our plans include not just a physical clinic, but also envision funding a staff of medical and support personnel from the local community. Even without a permanent clinic we already employ a nurse and nurses aid, be we can do so much more.

Please join us in building infrastructure and providing for a better future for Dondon!

Our clinic project in Dondon, continues to make progress despite the challenges caused by the pandemic. We continue to meet virtually with contractors and are finalizing our selection of materials. Because of the pandemic everything has gone slower this year. While Haiti has so far been spared the worst effects of the pandemic there is great concern that there may be a second wave, as is currently being seen in some other countries that had similarly been spared previously.  Still Haiti did not need a pandemic to put a spotlight on its need for public health infrastructure. The daily burden of chronic disease has already done that.

Despite the lack of a permanent home, our clinic continues to provide care for over 400 patients with chronic diseases. Our Haitian nurse provides medications, monitors glucose, checks blood pressures and more.  Aided by a generous grant from the Rotary Club of Cleveland we are also continuing our work to combat malnutrition in children. As Covid vaccines become available we can again begin to plan for mobile clinics in Dondon.

A medical clinic is more than a building, in fact the building is the easy part. We are getting closer to our vision of a medical clinic for Haitians largely staffed by Haitian healthcare workers. In addition tho health care this clinic will provide valuable jobs. This will require an ongoing financial commitment, even when the building is complete. As the community flourishes, it will become more self-sufficient, but in the meantime, we will need your continued support. As the difficult year of 2020 thankfully comes to an end, we encourage those who are able to consider a monthly donation.  Even a small recurrent donation provides stability to our efforts. In fact just $5 a month can make a big difference! 

So what can a small charity do during a pandemic?   Quite a lot as it turns out.

At Haitian Vision Foundation out local connections helped us to provide a robust local response. We set up hand washing stations- maintained by students that we have sponsored, provided education on social distancing, masks and handwashing via printed information in Creole and local radio interviews.  And as the economy shut down, we purchase bulk food which was then delivered as over 400 meals to families at risk.

But we feel like we can and should do more. The pandemic has once again underscored the lack of health care infrastructure in Dondon. We did not have facilities to hospitalize sick patients or to provide oxygen or other supportive services to those in need. This provides further impetus to our drive to build a first class health clinic with overnight bed capability in Dondon. While it has been difficult to proceed quickly during the pandemic, we have continued to discuss plans and materials with the architect and to line up contractors.

But we need your help. While our building fund remains untouched, our emergency response to the pandemic has taken a large chunk of our reserves, some of which we had planned to add to the building fund. Please help us in our efforts to build capacity so that we may be ready for the next emergency in Dondon, whether it is the ongoing pandemic or a dehydrated child with diarrhea. 

Imagine living in a world where children die of diarrhea, high blood pressure and diabetes go untreated, and even mild infections are life threatening. All because of an overwhelmed and ill-equipped health care system. Americans are now facing just this possibility due to the coronavirus pandemic that has led to such unprecedented disruption in our daily lives. Unfortunately, this terrible situation is an everyday reality of life for most Haitians.

With few doctors and clinics, even fewer well-equipped hospitals and almost no ICU beds, people die or suffer complications from preventable and treatable problems every day. And now the coronavirus will exploit this systemic weakness with potentially catastrophic results. Please help HVF as we build healthcare capacity in Dondon. Not just for difficult times like these, but for everyone, every day. Certainly, we all deserve high quality care, pandemic or not.

We have the land, we have the plans and we are interviewing contractors. The coronavirus pandemic may slow us down, but it will not stop us.

Links:

• Visit our website!