Children are the most adorable creature on earth but they are fragile. They need cares and protection in order to be healthy. It is an adult failure when they end up hospitalized for malnutrition and spend over two months in a stressful environment. As we know how much they are exposed to cretinism after suffering from malnutrition, we provide them with psycho-social support and cognitive development stimulation in order to shorten the stay and give them a chance to succeed in life.
Even before the devastating earthquake that collapses its building, the pediatric center at the Haitian State Hospital didn't have an appropriate environment to hospitalize the abandoned and malnourished children. There, they suffered a lot and spent, most of the time, over two months in a very stressful environment. So, as an organization involving in children integral health, we decided to put apart a safe daycare inside the hospitalization room and provide them with social workers and tools.
By creating this safe place inside the hospitalization room and by providing with social workers, we are sure that we will shorten the stay by decreasing the children stress; mitigating the risk of cretinism subsequent to malnutrition by stimulating the cognitive development. Better, by the assistance we offer to the young mothers, we contribute to strengthen the mother-child relationship. In most of the cases we faced, young mothers didn't prepare to give birth and ignore what they should do.
We're aiming at reducing the risk of malnutrition relapse for the 7200 children frequenting our daycare per year, empowering the young mothers and making of the hospitalization room a restful place. In the other hand, we want to drive the health professionals to understand that it's not enough to provide somatic healthcare mainly when dealing with children from precarious family. Our struggle aims at the same time to insert the right to play in the Haitian culture and healthcare practices.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
