Although our monthly e-bulletin usually includes news and updates from PIH sites around the world, this month's special issue is devoted to PIH's work to help relieve and rebuild Haiti after the earthquake on January 12.
Above photo: Caring for patients in the courtyard at HUEH, the general hospital in Port-au-Prince. More photos
From the desk of Ophelia Dahl
PIH Executive Director Ophelia Dahl with a patient in Haiti.
One of the operating rooms at HUEH.
Dear Friends,
Haiti’s catastrophe will forever divide its history into before earthquake and after.
The dust has not settled. Flying towards Port-au-Prince, you can see a thick layer of smog lingering above the city. The air is acrid, stings the eyes, and makes you cough. The airport is its own world: a spread of tents large and small, containers, supplies, boxes, vehicles, bicycles, and people wandering about—both in and out of uniform.
We drove to the University Hospital (HUEH). The scene there is truly impressive in so many ways. Much progress has been made. Medical tents are lined up in a row. Inside, beds and stretchers lie close together. Most patients are post surgery, bandaged, or in casts. They are now receiving narcotics. Operating rooms are up and running—now 24 hours a day. Patients are lying down, most with haunted eyes, but always responding to a greeting, often waving a slow hand. I had to stop myself from greeting them so they wouldn’t have to wave back in pain.
Last night, I sat outside the main tent at HUEH on a bench talking to Dr. Evan Lyon and Dr. David Walton, both have worked with PIH in Haiti for many years. With the lights on inside the tent, I could see the silhouettes of relatives tending to the patients, washing them with a rag, feeding or massaging them. The sadness everywhere is palpable. Haitians are usually very expressive in their mourning. Before the quake occurred, wakes would typically last all night, with women wailing and shouting in agony outside on the ground. People often fainted during funerals. I cannot imagine that happening here now. The wailing would never stop. There is no energy for weeping. Everything is marked by the quiet. Nearly everyone—adults and children—wear the same flat, sad expression on their faces.
Volunteers run about. Some nurses, both Haitian and American are around, but there is a lack of nursing care everywhere. The nursing school collapsed in the quake, flattened between two buildings that still stand. Its rubble holds the remains of the entire second-year nursing class. You can smell the bodies when you walk past. It seems so arbitrary which buildings crumbled; maybe that’s why no one feels safe in any concrete structure.
A courtyard at HUEH where makeshift tents are draped over patient beds. (Photographer: Dr. Mark Hyman)
Outside in the courtyards at HUEH, the patients who were evacuated from the ward after the second wave of aftershocks have makeshift tents over their beds. It is starting to look like people are staying – where else can they go? The main buildings are mostly still standing on the HUEH campus, but several have major cracks. Patients are afraid to be inside. Evan told me that when people felt aftershock tremors last week, they pulled out their IVs and scrambled out of the hospital as fast they could.
My first night, after touring parts of the city, we stayed with a family in Port-au-Prince. We slept on the floor inside their house. The family slept on the ground outside—still too unsure to go in.
We are deeply grateful for the multitude of people who have contacted us wanting to help in any way possible, from hosting fundraising events to providing medical assistance, medicine and supplies. Below is a list of ways that you can get involved in PIH's work:
Fundraise: Cash donations are the quickest and most efficient way to help the people in most need.
At this time, while we wish we could use all of the support so generously offered, we need specific items urgently in large quantities. Click here for more information.
Charitable contributions for Haiti relief deductible on 2009 taxes
Taxpayers can count charitable contributions made for relief efforts in Haiti on either their 2009 or 2010 tax returns.
Under new legislation, donations that are “cash contributions made for the relief of victims in areas affected by the earthquake in Haiti” can be deducted in 2009 as long as they are made after January 11, 2010 and before March 1, 2010.
If you have made a donation to PIH through our website and do not have a tax receipt (generally emailed to you shortly after your donation), you can download one online. If you made a donation through your cellphone via text message, keep your telephone bill--as it will show the name of our organization, and the date, and amount of your donation.
"I believe that there is an opportunity to build Haiti back better."
Dr. Paul Farmer, PIH co-founder and United Nations Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti, recently testified at the “Haiti: From Rescue to Reconstruction” hearing of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"I am at my core optimistic about the possibilities before us and the potential of our support to help rescue and transform our poorest neighbor," stated Paul in his submitted testimony. "The response from citizens of the United States to the recent events in Haiti has been overwhelming and encouraging. There is the promise of solidarity by our leadership to make long-term commitments to the kinds of investments needed in Haiti—and to fulfilling them."
"For two centuries, the Haitian people have struggled for basic human and economic rights, the right to health care, the right to education, the right to work, the right to dignity and independence," he continued. "These goals, which Haitians share with people all over the world, should direct our policies of aid and rebuilding."
As reports of devastation in the field pour in, we continue to be amazed and encouraged by the generosity and support of people who have become our partners over the last week--including Cliff Landis.
Cliff Landis is a librarian in Valdosta, Georgia who, until last week, was planning on a post-holiday replenishment of his savings account. However, upon hearing about the suffering the earthquake has wrought, he decided to further deplete his own savings in favor of contributing to PIH’s relief efforts in Haiti.
But Cliff didn’t stop there. He also encouraged friends, family, and readers of his blog to give, promising them he would match every gift up to $10,000. Watch a video of what happened next:
PIH applauds legislation to eliminate Haiti's debt
In the past two years, Haiti has faced several crises--from four consecutive hurricanes and tropical storms in less than three weeks to sharp food and fuel price increases and a downturn in the global economy. All the while, the international community required Haiti to continually pay off its debilitating debt, leaving it stretched far to thin to be able to support the basic economic and social needs of its population. Now, after the worst earthquake in 200 years, Haiti faces a huge rebuilding effort.
Should the international community expect Haiti to continue the same debt payments?
Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) say, "No."
Last week, the senators introduced legislation with a specific focus on debt relief to speed recovery efforts in post-earthquake Haiti. Read more.
The free man will never be broken
The Neg Mawon Statue.
PIH Medical Director Dr. Joia Mukherjee arrived in Port-au-Prince less than 48 hours after the 7.0 earthquake left hundreds of thousands of people dead, injured, homeless, and afraid. However, the image burnt most powerfully in her memory is one of hope.
After her first day treating patients, Joia asked the Zanmi Lasante driver, “Kote Neg Mawon?” (Where is Neg Mawon?) He brought her to the destroyed National Palace, and there in front of it was the statue of Neg Mawon. The symbol of Haiti, Neg Mawon means at once marooned man, the runaway man and the free man.
In 1804 the Haitian slaves defeated the army of Napoleon making Haiti the first and only nation founded by a slave revolution. This victory resulted in Haiti being feared by the world’s powerful countries and thus politically marginalized or dominated for the next 200 years. Symbolizing this epic struggle, Neg Mawon stands, shackles broken, machete in hand, defiant and unafraid. He blows a conch to call others to freedom.
Joia found herself weeping in front of the statue when a Haitian woman—a survivor who until that moment was a stranger—approached her. She too was crying and as she put her arms around Joia, she said, “Neg mawon pap jamn kraze.” The free man will never be broken.
Half a world away from each other, and with very different geo-political histories, Haiti and Rwanda have some demographic and cultural similarities—and are both home to PIH sister organizations. Both have populations of close to 9 million, and economies that are about 1/3 agricultural. In both countries, slightly more than half the population lives on less than $1 per day. And both have cultures in which “family” extends far beyond those related by blood and generosity is nearly boundless.
It was that feeling of solidarity that led the staff of PIH’s sister organization, Inshuti Mu Buzima (“Partners In Health” in the local Kinyarwanda language) to take up a collection for their Haitian colleagues in this time of crisis—donating a percentage of their own salaries to Haiti relief activities.
Almost 16 years after the genocide that killed nearly one million Rwandans, survivors have a deep understanding of what it is like to live in a country in which every person has lost someone close to them. It has become all too clear that this is the situation in Haiti: the earthquake has left no one untouched. “Rwandans feel like they are somehow related to their sisters and brothers in Haiti and [we] wanted to do something to participate in the earthquake relief action,” said IMB Chief Financial Officer Odile Nzirabatinya.
The solar panels at the Boucan Carre hospital in Haiti.
With electricity knocked out around the country following the earthquake, surgeons were forced to operate on patients using flashlights. Laboratory and diagnostic equipment were rendered useless. Electric water pumps were nonfunctional. Gas generators helped fill the gap, but finding fuel quickly became difficult, and gas that could be found carried price tags as high as $20 a gallon in the days following the earthquake. Many of our clinics powered by gas generators came uncomfortably close to running out of fuel.
For over 20 years, Partners In Health and its sister organization Zanmi Lasante have worked to bring modern medical care to poor communities in Haiti by helping to create the needed facilities and infrastructure.
However, there are still many complex procedures that cannot be performed anywhere in Haiti, especially after the destructive earthquake on January 12. For some of those patients, PIH’s Right to Health Care (RTHC) program is a chance to receive the care they desperately need. Read about the first four earthquake survivors medevaced through this program.
For years, PIH’s RTHC program has brought patients who cannot be treated at local sites to larger, better-equipped hospitals in the U.S. and elsewhere. The program demonstrates PIH’s commitment to the human right to health care and embodies the organization’s mission statement: “When a person in Peru, or Siberia, or rural Haiti falls ill, PIH uses all of the means at our disposal to make them well...Whatever it takes. Just as we would do if a member of our own family—or we ourselves—were ill.”
Final shot: Images from Haiti
PIH and Zanmi Lasante on the ground in Haiti. Clockwise from top: Despite stormy weather in Boston, a plane carrying surgical volunteers and supplies prepares to depart for Port-au-Prince; A young patient recovers from the surgery that repaired a hole in her abdomen; PIH Women's Health Coordinator Sarah Marsh caring for a day-old baby born in the rubble of Port-au-Prince; The staff at Cange takes a moment of silence to remember those lost in the earthquake; A young patient with a new cast; A surgical team in Cange as they work to save a patient.
Monetary donations can be sent to: Partners In Health P.O. Box 845578 Boston, MA 02284-5578
Sending money where it will do the most good in Haiti NBC Nightly News recently reported on how you can locate and donate to the most worthwhile charities, including use of Charity Navigator, a website that evaluates a charity's effectiveness. Watch this segment.
Rising to meet an infinite need "With 10 hospitals and deep roots in Haiti, Boston-based Partners In Health has became one of the pillars of the worldwide response to the Jan. 12 earthquake," reports the Boston Globe in a recent article. The piece details PIH's orchestration of efforts to help relieve and rebuild Haiti--on the ground at our hospital in Cange, as well as at our administrative headquarters in Boston. Read the article and watch an accompanying video.
The good doctor Want to learn more about the early days of Partners In Health? Read a New Yorker profile of our co-founder, Dr. Paul Farmer, and his efforts to provide health care to the poor, both in Haiti and in other impoverished countries. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tracy Kidder, this article eventually became the basis of his best-selling book Mountains Beyond Mountains.
Tales from the front An op-ed in the Miami Herald by PIH physicians, including co-founder Paul Farmer, describes what they're seeing on the ground in Haiti, as well as some diagnoses and prescriptions for moving forward. Read the op-ed.
PIH Internships Every year, the Institute for Health and Social Justice at Partners In Health hosts a summer internship program for a select number of students and professionals early in their careers who are interested in learning about current issues in health and social justice. The internship application consists of an application form, a resume, and responses to two short essay questions. The application form and instructions for summer 2010 will be made available on our website. The application deadline is Friday, February 12, 2010 at midnight EST.
Join us online! Social network with Partners In Health on the following sites:
By the numbers: PIH has sent 66 plane loads with more than 210 medical volunteers and 150,000 lbs of medical supplies to support the more than 4,500 PIH health care providers already in Haiti.
