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:
An infant with a fever and diarrhea. A pregnant mother with no access to prenatal care. A subsistence farmer with a bad foot infection.
In Dondon the lack of medical infrastructure is potentially life threatening. Sick people simply cannot afford the cost or healthcare or the cost associated with traveling to obtain it. In Dondon, as in much of Haiti, very few people have vehicles. To obtain care they not only must pay for the care in a private clinic in another town, but they must also pay for transportation (usually by motorcycle taxi) and lodging for as long as treatment takes.
We continue to make progress on our plans for our medical clinic in Dondon that would alleviate this problem. The land has been obtained and the site surveyed. We are evaluating building materials with the goal of utilizing inexpensive locally sourced materials that are both earthquake and hurricane resistant. The importance of the local sourcing of materials and labor cannot be overstated. The people of Dondon are not looking for handouts. At every step along the way we expect this project to provide added value in the form of jobs, development of skills and economic infrastructure.
The generosity of donors like you is making the HVF Dondon clinic a reality, but we still have a way to go to meet our goal of beginning construction soon. Consider how much an additional donation or $50 or $100 dollars could do or or beginning a monthly donation. Thank you for your support!
Stella age 27, suddenly lost her vision 4 months before our medical team visited Dondon. Without money for transportation or to see a doctor, she waited for our clinic. Since we were not able to provide definitive treatment, we transported her to a hospital 45 minutes away, paid her hospital fees and for transportation back to Dondon when her treatment was done. We are happy to report that she has gained some vision- which is still blurry, but much improved. We cannot help but wonder how much better the outcome could have been if she had received treatment immediately.
Just after the successful kick-off of our GlobalGiving fundraiser, a team of 2 physicians, 2 nurses and an architect travelled to Dondon. There we joined up with a Haitian physician, our HVF nurse and many local volunteers for a mobile clinic.
Despite the lack of a permanent clinic, in just 3 days we:
In parallel to the clinic, architect and board member Ben Herring surveyed the site that Dondon has given to us to build our clinic, while researching materials that could be locally sourced and are seismically resistant.
Meanwhile Dr Saint-Vil was able to break away from the busy clinic to meet with the town authorities who are pleased with what we have been able to accomplish in the 3 years that we have been working there. They remain strongly committed to our shared vision of a full time clinic staffed with Haitians, especially those from Dondon. Thank you to all our donors for your generous support! I am excited just thinking about what we will be able to accomplish with a permanet clinic!
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 will get an e-mail when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports via e-mail without donating.
We'll only email you new reports and updates about this project.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
