Partners In Health Haiti Earthquake Recovery

Thank you for your continued support of Partners In Health / Zanmi Lasante.

Hurricane Irma is rapidly approaching Haiti, and expected to hit several public hospitals and clinics supported by PIH. Experts have labeled Irma a Category 5 hurricane, the most severe form, and expect it to be extremely violent and deadly—particularly in the rural areas where PIH works, and where most people live in houses built from mud, stones, sticks, and corrugated metal. Many are subsistence farmers who rely on their crops, livestock, and fruit trees for food and extra income.

In the short-term, we’ll need help responding to a potential influx of patients seeking emergency medical attention, especially if the storm batters our facilities. In the long-term, we’ll need help responding to potential upticks in cholera and malnutrition, respectively resulting from standing storm water and losses of crops and livestock.

More information is available here: https://www.pih.org/article/pih-braces-hurricane-irma

On behalf of our staff and patients in Haiti, thank you for your generosity during another time of disaster.

Links:

• PIH Braces for Hurricane Irma

Thank you for continuing to support Partners In Health/Zanmi Lasante!

Our work to provide high quality medical care in Haiti has never flagged -- not since we started our first clinic there 30 years ago, and not since the devastating earthquake in 2010.

One of the most pernicious public health problems that Haiti faces is malnutrition -- which PIH, thanks to your generosity, has the tools to treat. Please read on for an excerpt from a report and reflection from a PIH staff member who visited a malnutrition clinic in Boucan Carre, Haiti (pictured above). You can also find a link to the full story below.

Roughly 1 in 5 children are starving in Haiti, and twice as many are stunted. Not all of them receive the care they need, but some do make it to PIH clinics and get enrolled in a malnutrition program. In Boucan Carré, an average of 127 patients visited the clinic every month and nearly 700 patients enrolled last year alone. That was just a fraction of the 9,000 children suffering from malnutrition whom PIH helped at its clinics and hospitals across the country in 2016.

Most children graduate from the malnutrition program after completing three months of appointments and Nourimanba supplements. They gain weight and grow inches taller. They begin reaching major development milestones, such as sitting, crawling, walking, and talking. In other words, they begin to do what children their age are supposed to do.

Links:

• Stevenson's Story: Starvation in Central Haiti