60 Minutes to watch... and a lifetime to act

We hope you enjoyed the 60 Minutes segment featuring the work of Partners In Health. In case you missed any part of the broadcast, it can be viewed here.

If the images you saw and the voices you heard have inspired you, learn more about how you can contribute to PIH's work in Haiti, and the movement for health and social justice around the world.

	The new ward in Burera.

For years, the 360,000 residents of the Rwandan district of Burera relied on a single doctor and a hospital that existed only in name. Not any longer. On March 20, what had been "an abandoned building where goats were hanging out" opened its doors as a beautiful new 24-bed ward, staffed by 43 skilled health professionals. The inauguration of the new ward marked a major milestone for the effort by the Rwandan government, PIH and the Clinton Foundation to bring quality health care to every corner of rural Rwanda.

Related: In addition to the Burera district, PIH Rwanda and its partners plan to scale up the rural health care model to all 27 districts in rural Rwanda.

A volunteer from Team Heart celebrates a successful surgery with a patient. Photographer: Diane McCormick, www.McCardinalPhoto.com

A volunteer surgical team from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston recently began a mission to help Rwandans suffering from heart failure (often caused by Rheumatic Heart Disease, or RHD). This condition leaves thousands of Rwandans gasping for breath in a process of slow suffocation that can only be treated with surgery, which medical facilities in Rwanda currently cannot provide. Enter Team Heart. This month, the team began began performing live-saving surgeries while working with PIH, a local hospital, and the Rwandan Ministry of Health to establish a self-sustained cardiac surgery program in the country. Team Heart has started a blog to document their innaugural trip. PIH co-founder Paul Farmer was one of the first to post.

Related: The story of two Rwandan girls with RHD

With no roads or means of transporting building supplies, community members are helping to carry the rocks needed to build a new clinic in Lebakeng.

“We had been warned by many that Lebakeng would pose more challenges than the other sites,” PIH Lesotho Country Director Jen Furin recalled. Literally translated, Lebakeng means “the middle of nowhere,” which perfectly describes the location of one of the program's newest sites. “I must confess part of me was hoping we would not see as much disease in Lebakeng and that we could start things a little more slowly," said Furin. "Those hopes were dashed almost immediately.”

In a single afternoon during a site visit to the clinic, PIH staff tested 13 women for HIV; six were found to be positive. The team was faced with a dilemma: start providing treatment in Lebakeng right away or wait until they were more "ready." After much discussion, they decided they could not wait.  

New hospital opens in Haiti's Central Plateau
A new hospital opened in January in the Central Plateau of Haiti. Built through a partnership between the Haitian Ministry of Health and Zanmi Lasante with funding from AmeriCares, the new facility will help serve the communities of Lascahobas and Lacolline. Before the construction of the hospital, patients had literally flooded into a small, poorly-equipped health center. “The people of Lascahobas and Lacolline, like all the people of Haiti, deserve modern health infrastructure,” said PIH Co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer, who attended the event along with Haitian President René Préval.  

Rwanda scales up PIH model as national rural health system
Inshuti Mu Buzima (IMB), PIH’s partner organization in Rwanda, has accomplished a great deal during its first two years of work in two destitute rural health districts, recording nearly 100,000 patient visits in 2006. Not content to stop there, IMB and their partners have committed themselves to an even greater challenge—to make IMB’s approach to delivering comprehensive, community-based care the model for Rwanda’s national Rural Health system. Plans have already been drafted to extend the model to all 27 districts and 9 million residents of rural Rwanda.

Battling HIV/AIDS: World AIDS Day brings a cause for celebration around the world
World AIDS Day on December 1 was the occasion for celebrations by PIH partner organizations around the world and for reflections by PIH Medical Director Joia Mukherjee on the progress that has been made over the past two decades. From Haiti to Rwanda, from Malawi to Peru, thousands of PIH staff, patients and community residents gathered to enjoy games, dances and songs, to hear lessons and testimonials from medical staff, community health workers and people living with HIV, and to celebrate, in Joia Mukherjee's words, "solidarity and what communities’ voices can achieve when raised together."

A doctor's journal: bringing hope to patients in Lesotho
Suffering from both AIDS and tuberculosis, Mathabo Posholi was too weak to sit up in bed when Dr. Jonas Rigodon first visited her. Eight months later, she is up and about and eager "to talk to people who have HIV and tell them that they have to take their medicine."

Socios En Salud responds to earthquake in Peru, calls for support for victims
A rapid-response medical team from PIH's partner organization, Socios En Salud (SES), was among the first to arrive ready to provide relief, guidance, and a little bit of hope to survivors of the recent earthquake in Peru. SES was able to contribute badly needed medicine, food, clothing, and blankets. Although no deaths have been confirmed among SES's 115 multidrug-resistant TB patients in the area, the quake destroyed the homes of more than half of them and several lost at least one family member.

PIH news archive