June: New partnership sends American electrical volunteers to Haiti

The main hospital electrical room and vault are being prepared.

Dr. David Walton (Project Director for Partners In Health), Myk Manon (Haiti Country Director for NRECA) and Omar Tejada (Head Engineer for COAMCO) look over the site.

The beginning of June has been especially productive at construction site of the National Teaching Hospital at Mirebalais, Haiti. Our construction team has prepared the roof of the Building 4--housing the mechanical and electrical equipment, laundry facilities and kitchen--with steel reinforcements so that they can pour the concrete slab in the next couple of days. The construction team has been quickly installing the electrical and plumbing, stuccoing, and laying concrete block in all four buildings currently under construction. 

Partners In Health has recently agreed to a partnership with the National Rural Electrical Cooperative Association (NRECA). Engineers from NRECA, a US-based company, brought crews of volunteer electrical linemen to the site last week to begin making improvements to electrical grid and transmission lines. The NRECA is also working as consultants with EdH, the Haitian national power company, to help them to improve the electrical transmission and infrastructure of the country. 

This coming week we look forward to pouring more concrete and starting the walls of the Men’s, Women’s, and Children’s Wards. 

Additionally, the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti (IHRC) held a press conference on May 27 to announce that Mirebalais Hospital--the largest IHRC-approved public construction project in Haiti--is 50% complete. This milestone has been covered by a variety of journalists around the globe, including stories in the following publications:

Teaching Hospital on Haiti’s Central Plateau Over 50 Percent Complete
(picked up from PR Newswire, similar stories in WN.com, KOLD, Bioportfolio, Yahoo, Herald Online, India Times, MedIndia, Haiti Live News)
The PIH/ZL-MSPP Teaching Hospital of Mirebalais, a major public health services and medical training facility in Haiti's Central Plateau approved by the Board of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) in August 2010, is quickly moving toward completion, having passed the 50 percent completion point this May.  

Bellrive rechaza la propuesta de Rouzier de eliminar comision de reconstruccion
(similar story in Yahoo, El Nuevo Diario, Informador, Univision, SDP Noticias, Terra, MSN, 123.cl, EFE)
El primer ministro saliente de Haití, Jean-Max Bellerive, se mostró este jueves opuesto a la eliminación de la Comisión Interina para la Reconstrucción del país (CIRH), como lo planteó ayer el candidato a sucederle en el cargo, el economista Daniel Gerard Rouzier.