Partners In Health Haiti Earthquake Recovery

(Above) Our team of doctors and nurses collaborate with visiting clinicians to perform pediatric heart surgery at University Hospital in Mirebalais, Haiti.

January 12, 2016 marked the six year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake.  

"Six years after the sadness and the tragedy of the earthquake, the heroic Haitian people continue to heal and to rebuild. Their great courage is a beacon and their remarkable resilience is an inspiration," said Dr. Gary Gottlieb, chief executive officer of Partners In Health. "We are privileged to walk in their shadows and to be guided by their brilliance and their passion. Together, we must create and provide the superb health care services that every Haitian covets and that we all deserve."

With the help of our staff, partners, and supporters, Partners In Health continues to work toward building a healthier Haiti.

PIH has been in Haiti for nearly 30 years, after sprouting from a small rural clinic in Cange and spreading to 12 communities across the Central Plateau and Lower Artibonite—two of the country’s poorest regions.

University Hospital is the latest example of that long-term commitment. The facility is home to a host of specialty services, from surgery and pediatrics to physical therapy and obstetrics and gynecology.

Our work in Haiti isn’t done. We’re busy recruiting and training the next generation of specialists, doctors, and nurses who will no doubt perform their own medical miracles. We’ve taken our approach in Haiti and adapted it in other countries around the world—from Peru to Russia, Rwanda to the Navajo Nation—where we work with local governments to make lasting improvements to health care systems.

On behalf of our patients and colleagues in Haiti, thank you for believing in and supporting our work to build back better—we couldn’t do it without you.  

Thank you so much for supporting Partners In Health and the ongoing mission to help Haiti rebuild after the 2010 earthquake. We are thrilled to share with you an excerpt from a story about Père Eddy (pictured above), "Haiti’s patron saint of mental health," and his work with Partners In Health to improve mental health care in Haiti.

Eddy Eustache, or Père Eddy as he’s most often called, is Haiti’s patron saint of mental health. In the decade since 2005, when PIH (known locally as Zanmi Lasante) hired him as its first psychologist in Haiti, he has trained and expanded his mental health team to include 50 social workers and 13 psychologists who work in 12 clinics across the region. With guidance from PIH’s cross-site mental health team, led by Dr. Giuseppe (Bepi) Raviola, Père Eddy and his team have successfully delivered psychological care in some of the most impoverished regions of the country.

After a 7.0 earthquake shook Port-au-Prince, resulting in more than 300,000 dead and thousands more injured, it became increasingly clear to PIH staff that Haitians needed mental health services. Post-earthquake PTSD wasn’t as much the issue as was long-standing depression, anxiety, and stress developed over decades of poverty, unemployment, violence, and political instability—what Père Eddy calls the “poverty package.”

“The earthquake did not bring mental illness to Haiti,” Père Eddy says. “It has been to everyone an opportunity of awareness raising, where people had to understand that something had to be done, something still has to be done for the burden of mental health. We have a population of more than 10 million with two public psychiatrists. That’s totally under-operational.”

Because of staunch advocates like Père Eddy, the mental health program in Haiti demonstrates what is possible in some of the poorest places in the world. But the priest-turned-psychologist doesn’t take this as a sign that his work is done. In some ways, it’s just begun.

Links:

• Pere Eddy, Haiti's Patron Saint of Mental Health