Equip University Hospital in Mirebalais, Haiti

Last month, there was a tap-tap accident in Saut d’Eau, Haiti – a community near Mirebalais. The victims from this crash were taken to University Hospital’s emergency department for treatment – a great example of Partners In Health/Zanmi Lasante staff providing essential emergency care to the communities around the hospital. In the past, patients from such an accident would likely have been transferred to Port-au-Prince for treatment, but with our new capabilities in Mirebalais, clinicians were able to treat them at University Hospital.  

Thanks to your support, University Hospital is equipped with state-of-the-art medical technology that is saving lives every day.  The article below, written by Partners In Health's Christian Hague, summarizes the story of one of the first emergency situations since the hospital began operating.  

Emergency Department at University Hospital Treats Victims of Bus Crash

Each year, a three-day spiritual pilgrimage known as the Feast of Mount Carmel draws thousands of faithful to the town of Saut d’Eau in Haiti’s rural Central Plateau. The pilgrims come to bathe in the local waterfall where, over 150 years ago, the Virgin Mary reportedly appeared and began to heal the sick. They often come in the back of pickup trucks known as tap-taps that are crowded with passengers and can be dangerous on the area’s unpaved, winding roads. In past years, tap-tap accidents claimed many lives during the pilgrimage to Saut d’Eau.

When a tap-tap crashed in the nearby town of Morne Couleuvre during this year’s July pilgrimage, the injured were brought to the nearby Hôpital Universitaire d’Mirebalais, a new hospital operated jointly by Partners In Health, its Haitian sister organization Zanmi Lasante, and the Haitian Ministry of Health. The 300-bed hospital offers many services that were never before available in this area of the Central Plateau, including a CT scanner that was used with many accident victims to diagnose injuries. The volume of patients from the Morne Couleuvre bus accident flooded the hospital’s emergency ward, where PIH/ZL’s clinicians were able to successfully treat 14 patients suffering from a variety of traumatic injuries, including four people with serious head injuries, one with a critical cervical spine fracture, one with a femur fracture, and a variety of other minor injuries. With the combined efforts of the emergency and surgical teams and the availability of the CT scanner, which has dramatically improved diagnostic capacity, the patients were well cared for at University Hospital and only one patient needed to be transferred for further care. 

Events like this highlight the essential services that University Hospital is providing to patients in the area around Mirebalais. Previously, the area lacked a large-scale medical facility to deal with high patient volume and provide essential emergency services, so patients often had to be transferred to the capitol in Port-au-Prince. “Having a modern and well-equipped emergency department and a highly trained team will dramatically improve our ability to reduce morbidity and mortality related to trauma in the Central Plateau,” says Dr. Regan Marsh, the Director of Emergency Services at University Hospital. “The ED physicians and nurses will be able to quickly assess, stabilize and manage both minor and major injuries – and have access to essential resources, such as bedside ultrasound and CT scan. We have already started trauma training for both the ED staff and surgeons and are continuing it now with one of our first visiting professors, who arrived in July 2013.”