Equip University Hospital in Mirebalais, Haiti

Another year is beginning, and while there is still much work to do to ensure access to quality health care for people who have none, we have much to celebrate! With your help, Partners In Health made substantial progress in Haiti, through our network of almost 2,400 community health workers and 14 health care facilities, including our world-class teaching hospital in Mirebalais—University Hospital.

In Haiti, 1 in every 5 children is malnourished, and 1 in 3 is stunted because they don’t have enough to eat. With your help, Partners In Health is working toward eliminating malnutrition in Haiti and all of the places where we work. In an average month, 127 patients received care and nutritional supplements at the malnutrition clinic in Boucan Carré. That’s just a fraction of the total number of starving children PIH helped last year; altogether, staff enrolled 9,000 children as new patients.

Partners In Health makes an effort to reach all malnourish patients in all parts of Haiti. We support 14 clinics and hospitals in our mission to combat malnutrition.  One of our many patients was 17-month old Lovenyou.  Lovenyou had been sick with diarrhea for several days before a reaching PIH-supported clinic.  He was brought to the Boucan Carré clinic where he was diagnosed with severe malnutrition. When he arrived at the clinic, he weighed only 17 pounds – well below the normal growth curve for a boy his age.

As Lovenyou’s condition worsened (spiked fever, diarrhea, not eating, losing consciousness), his mother brought him to the PIH-supported University Hospital in Mirebalais.  Tests showed that he was in dire need of additional nutrients.  Within eight days of receiving treatment, Lovenyou was doing much better, but he still had miles to go. In the weeks to follow, his mother would travel with him (sometimes walking) on the 30-minute distance from home to the University Hospital.  During these visits, PIH provided Lovenyou with a supply of Nourimanba – nutrition rich paste which is produced and distributed by PIH.

Lovenyou’s and so many other patient's recoveries were made possible by donors like you. You have been instrumental in everything from keeping the lights on at our clinics, to the production and distribution of our nutritional peanut paste. Thank you for believing that everyone deserves health care, regardless of where they were born, and for walking alongside Partners In Health in our work to achieve our mission.