Partners In Health Haiti Earthquake Recovery

Thank you for your continued support of PIH’s Haiti Earthquake Recovery project!

A large part of PIH’s efforts for earthquake recovery in Haiti involve rebuilding the health system, including ensuring that women have the resources that they need for safe childbirth. We are pleased to share with you the following story from Haiti- about a mother named Natacha, who benefited from the services offered at the maternal waiting home at University Hospital in Mirebalais, Haiti:

This pregnancy was different.

Natacha had already given birth to three girls, so she thought she knew what to expect while expecting. But the 39-year-old mother began feeling unbearable pain while seven months along. No matter how she shifted her body, her baby lay in an awkward position.

Natacha was unable to get the help she needed in her home of Port-de-Paix, so her sister, who is a trained nurse, recommended she travel to the closer University Hospital in Mirebalais, Partners In Health’s 300-bed teaching facility in the Central Plateau that offers free care.

She arrived at University Hospital on Sept. 18, 2017, and was seen by an OB-GYN, who confirmed that her baby boy was breech, or not head down. She also learned he was hydrocephalic, meaning his head was abnormally large from a buildup of fluid on the brain. The doctor recommended she stay nearby so that staff could monitor her risky pregnancy.

Normally, staying nearby would have been impossible for Natacha. She had no family in Mirebalais, and she definitely couldn’t afford two months of lodging as she waited for her Nov. 23 due date.

Luckily, Zanmi Lasante, as PIH is known in Haiti, had a new maternal waiting home to accommodate women in situations like Natacha’s by providing free lodging at the University Hospital campus. She was admitted that same day, given a welcome kit including basic toiletries, and settled into a room she shared with two other expectant mothers.

For her part, Natacha had faith that everything would turn out alright. She was five days away from her due date and feeling heavy, but hopeful. She had enjoyed her stay and marveled at how much it would’ve cost if she had had to pay for the free, comprehensive care she’d received so far.

“The care found here,” she said, “is priceless.”

Staff, stuff, space, and systems—those are the ingredients, says Dr. Paul Farmer, to strengthen a health care system. With the recent completion of a single facility in Haiti, made possible by your support, PIH has invested in all four.

The new state-of-the-art, 17,000-square-foot distribution center in Port-au-Prince dramatically increases warehouse space for PIH’s stock of lifesaving supplies, is climate controlled, and runs on a sophisticated open-source software system developed by PIH. The supply chain team can now easily find anything—from sterile gloves to lab tests, vitamins to scalpels—quickly pack it, and send it to a clinic. The result: clinics and hospitals provide better, more consistent care.

Before the distribution center opened, getting clinic staff the essential stuff they needed was a slow process. PIH’s supplies lived in a plywood warehouse that could not support a formal inventory system, nor store temperature-sensitive medication. Without refrigeration and a way to easily track materials within the warehouse, many drugs had to be stored off-site, and staff would spend days unloading shipping containers or packing trucks to get necessary tools to a clinic.

“Today we know exactly where we put our inventory. We can receive two containers and prepare three trucks to make deliveries to sites at the same time,” explains Villarson Avignon, supply chain director for PIH in Haiti.

There is still much more we can improve. The team could really use another 17,000 square feet, Avignon says. The difference, however, is already immeasurable for the supply chain team and for doctors, nurses, and patients throughout Haiti. “Nothing comparable,” says Avignon. “Day and night.”

Links:

• New Distribution Center, Software Vastly Modernizes Medical Stor