Haiti children in desperate need of food and water

On behalf of the entire NPH and St Luke team, we wish you a wonderful 2023, marked by peace and prosperity! 

We wish this for you, for Haiti, for the world.

We take the opportunity to report on our project out of the capital.

Port Salut is a commune of Haiti located on the south coast of the country, it has a population of approximately 60,000 and is 30 km from the city of Les Cayes.

St Luke does not only work in Port-Au-Prince, the capital of the country, but we are also in these following provincial areas: in the North in Limonade,in the Grand Anse in Dame-Marie and Laseringue,in the South East in Devarennes and in the South in St Louis du Sud,Camperin and Port Salut , working in the field of health, education, agriculture and Outreach. We always work alongside the underprivileged masses.

In the South, in Port Salut, we have a clinic called “Klinik Timoun Nou Yo” offering the following services consultations, vaccines, management of malnutrition, and laboratory. There are also 2 Guesthouses named “Kay Espoir” and “Kay Bò Lamè”. The Port Salut Program has a total of 44 employees.

The “Klinik Timoun Nou You” welcomes around 600 underprivileged children each month.We pick them up with our ambulance in various remote places. They often have diarrhea,scabiosis, urinary infections and suffer from malnutrition.

With only a small contribution they receive a medical consultation, laboratory tests and medication. In 4 years we were able to treat 28,800 children.

Often noting that the parents are also sick, the team decided 4 months ago to open a clinic for adults. Each month we welcome around 250 adults. We would like to always be able to help the most vulnerable of these patients so that they can receive quality care.

We make sure they can find medicine at our pharmacy. We are doing our best to help them recover in order to avoid the risk of being hospitalized.

We would like to improve the quality of service offered to the population every day. In order to do this we need an x-ray machine, sonography machine and a biochemistry machine for our laboratory in order to be able to better diagnose diseases in patients.

We would also like to provide a dental service for the benefit of the population.

We plan to build a vocational center for the benefit of people in the area so that they do not have to travel to the town of Les Cayes to learn a profession.

Thank you for your attention and support.

A letter from Fr Rick Frechette.

Dear family and friends,

I know that news of Haiti is rare.

It is probably just as well, or you would be even more saturated by bad news than you already are.

In recent years, many people live with a heaviness from pandemics, public shootings, global warming, wars, nuclear arms proliferation, hostile nationalism, fragile world economies, and other threats to existence.

It is not easy to imagine a hopeful future.

This also generates anxiety about what the future holds for our children and grandchildren. They deserve a better world than the one we are giving them.

The situation in Haiti unravels at a cruel and unrelenting pace.

In just the last few weeks we witnessed widespread gang wars, a massacre in Cite Soliel, the burning of the Cathedral, the burning of the Judicial Court, the closing of a major bank, the kidnapping of four of our staff, thousands more internal refugees.

Civilization and it's symbols- community, cohesion, transcendence, justice, economy-are being wiped out.

My work puts me daily in direct contact with the physical, emotional and spiritual wounds of those who have been torn to shreds by these tragedies.

It is not easy to imagine a future full of hope. This also generates anxiety about what the future holds for our children and grandchildren. They deserve a better world than what we are giving them.

We can't get used to bad news, be addicted to bad news.

It sounds strange to say, but the same giddy feeling can turn a deadly blizzard into the joy of a snowy day, or it can turn a hideous murder movie into satisfying entertainment.

Instead, we need to create our own hope and seek out other hopeful people. Rather than being overwhelmed, we must be the protagonists of hope. When hope is not in the air, you find it underground, deeply rooted. Like a treasure.

Despite our wounds, when we continue to do what is right regardless of the cost, hope flourishes within us and opens the way to good. It is totally in our power to say a good word at all times, to do a good deed.

Violence cannot force any of us to stop our work.

Thank you as always for your support for our work in Haiti, which allows hope to act.