By Rod Harmon | Project Leader
When 15-year-old Daichca became pregnant, she was thrown into a world of chaos. Her aunt with whom she had been living threw her out. The baby's father abandoned her. She had no home, no family support, and no idea how to take care of herself, much less a child.
She felt utterly, completely, alone.
Then one day last September, she attended a mother’s clinic supported by Konbit Sante Cap-Haitien Health Partnership in the Fort Saint Michel community of Cap-Haitien. And she met nurse Josaime Clotilde St Jean, who took her under her wing.
“When you have problem, you call me,” St Jean told her. “No matter what, no matter when—you call me.”
St Jean is a Registered Nurse who has served as Konbit Sante’s community health program manager since 2012. She is responsible for helping organize activities for community outreach clinics in Petite-Anse, one of the city’s poorest communities. With her facilitation and guidance, Daichca received prenatal care and gave birth at the Fort Saint Michel Health Center. Both she and her newborn child are now receiving postnatal care at the health center. All of this has been made possible by Konbit Sante supporters.
Konbit Sante purchases essential supplies and medicines for its partner facilities at lowest possible cost, and endeavors to fill three shipping containers per year. These containers contain everything from hospital beds and examination tables to emergency medical supplies and birthing kits to expectant mothers. We only provide supplies that are requested and needed by our partners to ensure that nothing goes to waste.
Daichca is not unlike hundreds of hundreds of mothers and their children who are helped by Konbit Sante in the Cap-Haitien area every year.
Under the oversight of the Haiti MSPP (Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population, commonly known as the Ministry of Health) and with help from Konbit Sante, agents de santé (community health workers) provide education and prenatal examinations to pregnant women, including making referrals for regular checkups and deliveries at FSM, and supporting midwives when the mothers either cannot or choose not to deliver in the hospital. For mothers and children up to age 5, they facilitate postnatal care, including field vaccinations, follow-up exams, and education about topics ranging from family planning to nutrition. If expectant mothers cannot pay for prenatal care at FSM, Konbit Sante arranges for their fees to be waived.
Without Konbit Sante’s help, Daichca may have never received care during her pregnancy, delivered her baby in a hospital, or received follow-up exams after delivery. It’s likely she wouldn’t have known how to care for her child before and after birth. And it’s highly likely that her daughter would not be receiving the health care and nutrition that are so critical to a child’s early years.
We need a steady supply of essential medicines and equipment to ensure that mothers and their children continue to receive the level of care that helped Daichca and her child. The shipping containers are essential to achieving that mission.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
