Help Haiti's first line response to Covid-19

Let’s Help Save Sherlyne’s Life

The family, friends and colleagues of Dr. Sherlyne, a young Pediatrician, desperately need our help. 

Sherlyne graduated from the NPH (NPFS) St. Damien/Bernard Mevs residency program in Haiti and returned to her hometown in the north of Haiti, where she has been saving lives. 

In early December she gave birth to her first child, a healthy baby boy. Approximately two weeks following his delivery, she began experiencing severe abdominal pain and needed urgent surgery. Sherlyne has been hospitalized in Haiti since and after multiple life-saving abdominal surgeries she has exhausted local medical ability, has lost her left leg and will lose her life if we are unable to fly her to the United States to receive emergent care. 

The providers in Haiti have coordinated funds to air lift Sherlyn to the United States. However, she needs a medical visa to enter. 

We can’t obtain a medical visa without a receiving hospital. The funds we raise today will be used to pay her hospital bills and to encourage a hospital in the United States to receive Sherlyne immediately. If Sherlyne dies, not only will her baby boy loose his mom, her husband his beloved wife but Haiti will lose an amazing pediatrician, and we will lose our friend. 

Please donate any amount you can to help get Sherlyne to the United States. If you cannot donate, please share this message with someone who might be able to help.

There are problems within problems in Haiti, and so many limitations. Let's so our best to help Dr. Sherlyne in this fight for her life. 

We will be forever grateful.

The Organization "Our little brothers and sisters" (NPFS) and the "Saint-Luc Foundation" (FSL) welcome the Press in general and the Haitian population as a whole. They take this opportunity to bring to the known to all, that the Saint-Damien and Saint-Luc hospitals, and the physiotherapy center Saint Germaine are threatened with the cessation of their activities due to fuel. In fact, due to the regular unavailability of fuel on the national territory for several months and due to the recent social unrest in the country, our strategic fuel reserve available at Fondation Saint-Luc's "SMART GRID" energy plant, supplying these two hospitals and the Physiotherapy Center in electricity, is almost sold out. We are launching an SOS to major fuel suppliers to enable the crucial bailout from our reserve for ensuring continuation of pediatric services for more than 153 children hospitalized and for more than 47 pregnant women in the maternity ward of the Saint-Damien hospital; treatment urgent and inpatient care for more than 70 adults including in-hospital trauma care St. Luke's. In the absence of an immediate save, we will have little choice but to observe the shutdown next assistance services at the level of the two hospitals (Saint-Luc and Saint-Damien) and the Center of San Germaine Physiotherapy of NPFS. In addition, the availability of our employees are strongly affected by the impact of this latest fuel crisis on transportation in common. From the above, we appeal to state authorities, the private enterprise sector and the individuals, in order to quickly facilitate a fuel delivery corridor not only for Saint-Luc and Saint-Damien hospitals, but also to all hospitals affected by this crisis persistent fuel supply.

Tabarre, September 23, 2022

Father Richard Leo Fréchette President Foundation of San Luca

Dear NPH Family,

I am pleased to announce Dr. Pascale Yola Gassant Heurtelou as the new National Director of St. Damien’s hospital effective May 2, 2022. She succeeds National Director Dr. Jacqueline Gautier, who will continue to support St. Damien Hospital in another role.

Dr. Gautier, our outgoing director has said: “Dr Gassant is ready to embrace this new role in her career for the benefits of the families relying on the quality care offered at the institution. I am confident that she will be an excellent leader for Hospital Saint Damien.”

The National Director of St. Damien Hospital is overseeing all aspects in the hospital management ensuring that it is operating efficiently and effectively while upholding the mission and the vision of the NPH: providing quality care with Christian compassion toward a world without poverty. Dr. Gassant will join the Global Strategy Team and the St. Damien Task Force to work to bring forward our NPH mission.

Dr. Gassant is a Haitian national who joined the St. Damien team 19 years ago and is currently the head of Oncology. Thanks to her leadership, the department of pediatric oncology has been able to flourish for the great good of children with cancer in Haiti.

Dr. Gassant will continue to uphold the mission of the institution by counting on the collaboration of everyone and the medical community in particular.

Dr Gassant is the eldest of 4 siblings raised in a catholic household upholding principles and values such as love, altruism, honesty, empathy and respect.  She won a scholarship after high school to study medicine in Cuba where she obtained her degree in medicine and specialized in pediatrics, from 1991-2001.

As a pediatrician, she opted to become an oncologist to address the underserved issue in Haiti. Furthermore, she is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Global child Health at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences of St. Jude Research Children Hospital.

After working a year in a remote hospital in the country, she obtained a position as a general pediatrician at St. Damien, then located in Petionville. She became interested in oncology and started the program training herself on the task from 2004 to 2010. The major earthquake that affected Haiti in 2010 brought an opportunity for Dr Gassant to collaborate with St Jude Research center in Tennessee. Through this collaboration she was able to benefit from a fellowship in oncology in Guatemala.  Dr Gassant led beautifully the development of the oncologic department at St Damien, the only pediatric oncologic department in Haiti doing awareness program for the medical community to help with early diagnosis to improve childhood cancer prognosis.

Dr Gassant is a founding member of Fondation Haïtienne contre le Cancer infantile (FHACI) that supports the work of the hospital to help children with cancer and their families.

Dr Gassant is determined to use all her leadership skills and her discipline to help Saint Damien continue to move forward as the main referral mother and children hospital in Haiti and to uphold its vision and its mission.

Dr Gassant is well aware of the great difficulties of embracing her new role while the country became more unstable politically. This situation even motivates her more to remain a strong and efficient leader. She is optimistic for the future despite the tremendous challenges. She will put all her heart in working for positive changes at the institution. “I would like to use my leadership spirit to maintain the objectives of the institution which is to provide quality care to the most vulnerable,” Dr. Gassant says, “as well improving the work environment of the employees”

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Gassant. We wish her much success in her new role.

Miguel Venegas

NPHI Executive Director

Here in Haiti, you well know all the recent history.
Bandits and crime are all pervasive,
Port-au-Prince is now the kidnapping capital of the world, hunger is rampant,
the President was brutally killed, and the government has very few elected members,
there was another major earthquake three months ago,
there are thousands of internal refugees from violence,
we are in our third wave of Covid, and have been dealing with major shortages of oxygen, diesel and gasoline to keep our hospitals powered and functioning.

It can seem like on an already moonless night, deep and dark clouds roll in,
covering even the last lone star.

In our many programs in Haiti, we are doing our best to deal with the many challenges here, as you are where you live.

But our farms have folded, our guest house forced to close, we have had to suspend burying the destitute dead, we have two teachers who lost their lives to bandits, we have lost a large number of staff who have fled to live in other countries, and fundraising is way down, even as urgency spirals to new heights.

Our main efforts at this tough time are for very vulnerable people, including refugees and earthquake victims, and keeping our institutions going.

We are helping full throttle at grass roots levels.

Every year Forbes magazine lists about 170 countries according to how easy or difficult it is for any enterprise to survive there.

Haiti always ranks as one of the most challenging countries in the world, in which to succeed in any business or enterprise.

We know this by our lived experience, and yet, we are dedicated. We have grit. We care.

Our motto is "If not me, who? If not now, when?"

Let's agree to care more, not less, and to let Grace enter.

You can start tonight, by looking at the closest star.

Fr Rick Frechette CP DO

We want to share some information that came from Fr Rick Frechette earlier last month.

From May 1 to July 31, 2021 our medical team had opportunity to be of help to nearly 1,200 patients with acute, severe respiratory illness, at St Luke Hospital.

COVID testing is not widespread in Haiti, nor do results come back fast (sometimes after discharge or death), but we share the experience of others that the vast majority of those tested were shown to be COVID positive.
We all witnessed first hand that the people coming in during this wave, were even sicker than the first wave.
Our oxygen demand was higher because often we needed two tanks per person:
15 liters per minute by mask and 6 liters per minute by nasal cannula.
We were very fortunate to have received a generous supply of the antiviral medicine Remdesivir, which gave good results to those who came early on in their sickness.

We were also able, just prior to this wave and also currently, to get vaccinations for all staff who would like to be vaccinated.
The current vaccination campaign, led by St Damien Hospital and some other designated centers, is not just for medical staff, but offered to the public.

We have gone down presently from a long stretch of 105 bed occupancy, to the current 30 patients.

We are grateful to the whole courageous staff for the dedicated 24/7 care in spite of many challenges.

But we do also want to thank all of your for your spectacular support.

With your help we are able to run what amounts to an additional hospital on the St Luke Hospital compound, for these months and into the future, albeit at present at 30% capacity.

Because of your support, we are able to manage all extra staff, all the PPE materials needed, all the medicines, all the oxygen.

But also thanks to many of you, we have:

-increased the number of our oxygen tanks by 400,
-increased our bedside oxygen concentrators by 100,
-increased our oxygen producing capacity by 50 tanks per day (and will be able to increase even more),
-and we have been able to upgrade the industrial size generators and solar system that run the hospitals.

It is truly a marvel, when you consider the many stresses here in Haiti, which during this wave also included, very shockingly and sadly, the assassination of the President (and the earthquake that struck the West on August 14 ndr).

We have done, and will continue to do, our best to meet the challenges. Please keep supporting our work.