Partners In Health Haiti Earthquake Recovery

As Haiti experiences on going civil unrest, Partners In Health is working tirelessly to keep our doors opened for patients. Staff are working long hours, and scrambling to secure fuel for generators. Some have traveled hours by foot and motorcycle, dodging stones and tear gas, as they pass barricades to arrive for shifts. They are doing whatever it takes to take care of patients. We’re able to do this because of your partnership. 

Madeleine was one among thousands of Haitians across the country caught in life-threatening situations, as Haiti continues to be mired in more than one month of protests that have resulted in some 200 people injured and 20 killed. Roadblocks and demonstrations have cut off transportation in and around the capital, as well as across the country, as inflation spikes and Haitians struggle to access gas, food, and clean water. Banks, schools, businesses, and many health care facilities have been closed for weeks.

On a Saturday in late September, the 33-year-old mother fell to the floor while trying to get into bed. Soon she began feeling pains and noticed fluid discharge, interpreting them as the signs of early labor. With growing concern, she called her physician, who informed her that no one was at the clinic to help. Demonstrations and barricades had blocked all traffic.

Madeline and her husband, were informed that University Hospital was still opened. They soon hired a taxi and made the would be 45-minute trip to the University Hospital.  While in route to hospital, the couple would face road blocks and protesters. While explaining the situation of an expecting mother, the couple were allowed to pass through and directed to an unaffected route.  Two hours after leaving their home, the couple reached their destination.

Nursing staff swung into action. Madeleine was suffering from pre-eclampsia, they realized, and needed immediate attention. While they worked to get her blood pressure under control, they prepared her for labor so that, late Sunday evening, she safely delivered two babies before midnight. Two more babies followed in the wee hours of Monday morning.

Two girls arrived at 2.5 and 3.4 pounds, and two boys at 3.6 and 4 pounds. Because the newborns were underweight and had arrived more than two months early, they were placed in incubators to maintain their body temperature and receive constant monitoring in the NICU. While waiting to be transferred, Stevenson provided one of the babies kangaroo care, which allows infants skin-to-skin contact with their caregivers to help maintain body heat and stimulate feeding.

Meanwhile, Madeleine was in critical condition herself. She had lost a good amount of blood and required a transfusion. Hearing that the unrest had calmed, hospital leadership sent an ambulance to the Red Cross in Port-au-Prince that Tuesday to gather lifesaving units of O+ blood. The driver arrived back, safe and sound, and staff immediately provided the new mom with a transfusion.

The family remains in good hands at University Hospital, where they are cared for by a rotating crew of Haitian clinicians who arrive for shifts after overcoming their own obstacles each day. PIH staff form the backbone of a hospital that is trusted and always open, with lights on to receive more patients, like Madeleine and her family, every day.

In Haiti, PIH remains the largest non-profit health care provider, and as such we will continue to work to provide the citizens with quality healthcare, reaching toward the ultimate goal of eliminating deaths and preventable illness. Your support has contributed to the thousands of lives that are impacted everyday through our organization. We thank you!

Thank you for supporting Partners In Health and our work in Haiti.

Though we’ve made significant progress, Cholera is unfortunately still a part of daily life in Haiti. Years after one of the world’s deadliest outbreaks of Cholera, government and international agencies are still working to stop the spread of the disease. Partners In Health is one of these, thanks to supporters like you.

First introduced by UN peacekeeping forces after the 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti Cholera has had a devastating effect on Haiti. 10,000 people have been killed and countless more have fallen ill. That included mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons as well as infants. What makes Cholera a tough illness to combat is the manner in which it spreads and the conditions in which it thrives. Haiti’s environment provides both.

As a waterborne illness, Cholera is contracted through contaminated drinking water. In the absence of latrines or public sewage systems, the world’s poor often drink from the same river or stream used for defecation — infecting water supplies. This means that developing nations and areas affected by natural disasters are often at risk of Cholera outbreaks. In the case of Haiti, this small country has the unfortunate luck of being both a developing nation and a nation routinely affected by natural disasters.

However, there is still hope for Haiti. The number of cases and deaths per year has dramatically decreased. A part of that is due to donors like you.

Relief came to the people of Haiti in 2012 when large scale vaccination programs were launched to protect the people from the harmful bacteria. PIH was among one of the outbreak’s first responders in Haiti. Within several months, PIH had set up 11 Cholera treatment facilities throughout the country and began treating the sick. These vaccination programs were highly successful in reducing the total number of Cholera cases and defying expectations by successfully protecting 90% of adults and 94% of children.

That was until October 4, 2016, when Hurricane Matthew struck the small island nation. As expected with this water-borne disease, after the hurricane hit there was again an increase in the number of Cholera case and deaths. Thankfully, PIH and other relief agencies were there and ready to help the survivors. PIH directly treated 1,682 patients following the hurricane and worked with the Haitian Ministry of Health to help vaccinate an additional 800,000 Haitians.

In Haiti, PIH remains the largest non-profit health care provider, and as such we will continue to work together with our partners there to protect the citizens with quality healthcare, reaching toward the ultimate goal of eliminating deaths and illness due to Cholera. Your support has contributed to the countless lives that were saved from Cholera. We thank you!