Southern Haiti Earthquake Relief

Leah Brown - Grants Manager

In the four months since the August 14th earthquake, HEI/SBH has cared for tens of thousands of earthquake survivors. We have sent our mobile clinics to more than 100 rural communities affected by the earthquake. We have opened a permanent, Haitian-run orthopedic clinic, providing specialized orthopedic surgeries to dozens of survivors in need. Without your support, none of this would be possible. 

Just a few days after the earthquake, HEI/SBH began sending mobile clinics to earthquake-affected communities to provide critical medical care to survivors. With many local health centers damaged or destroyed, our mobile clinics are filling gaps in primary and emergency care. The mobile clinics are staffed by teams of clinicians and community health workers who travel to each community for four days at a time, setting up under tents or in whatever structures are available. Over the last four months, our mobile clinics have visited 113 communities and treated 17,584 patients. Nearly 6,000 of the survivors seen at the mobile clinics were children. One of these patients was two-year old Rithna. She was injured in the earthquake when a part of a wall fell on her leg. Rithna’s father took her to their local health facility but doctors there didn’t have the medical supplies to properly treat her. Fortunately, Rithna’s father heard about an HEI/SBH mobile clinic that would be visiting just a few days later. The staff at the mobile clinic assessed the injury and immediately referred Rithna to further treatment at HEI/SBH. They even sent an ambulance to take Rithna and her father on the long journey to Fond des Blancs.  

“As soon as I arrived at HSB, they took care of my baby,” Rithna’s father told us. She was quickly operated on and her injuries were treated successfully. “Now Rithna is playing and eating and is not in too much pain anymore,” her father reported. “I am happy. My child could have lost her foot, but thanks to the care we found at HSB, she won’t.” 

In addition to mobile clinics, HEI/SBH has been caring for survivors through specialized orthopedic care. With the support of other Haitian hospitals and visiting orthopedic surgeons, HEI/SBH has cared for more than 300 orthopedic patients and we have performed 69 orthopedic surgeries since the earthquake. The earthquake highlighted Haiti’s need for comprehensive, affordable orthopedic and rehabilitation care; currently, there are only 27 orthopedic surgeons for the country of 11 million people. Driven by this need, HEI/SBH successfully opened a permanent orthopedic outpatient clinic in November 2021, which has already seen more than 100 patients in less than 30 days.

Thanks to donors like you, HEI/SBH has been able to effectively respond and continue caring for patients during this terrible crisis. Your generous support is helping us to save lives during one of the most challenging periods in Haiti’s history.