Clairnite, who lost her arm in the January 12 earthquake, was one of the first recipients of the special bag designed and produced bt the Center d'Art in Cange.

With thousands of life-saving amputations performed following the January 12 earthquake, Partners In Health (PIH), Zanmi Lasante (ZL) and its community partners are working to find ways to accommodate the many people who are now adjusting to life in radically altered bodies.

The women at Center d’Art, located in Cange in the Haiti’s Central Plateau, are working on one way to help earthquake survivors recovering from arm amputations. The group has begun sewing shoulder bags with large pouches designed for easy one-armed access. The bags are also handy for patients currently on crutches, said Jackie Williams, who helps to run the Center d’Art.

The group is made up of about 30 women, who craft a range of products, including rugs, pottery, and other art works. The products are sold in Cange, as well as at several churches in South Carolina, where Jackie is originally from. The proceeds help the women in the group support their families.

However, these shoulder bags, the brainchild of Gillaine Warne of Zanmi Agrikol (ZL's agricultural sister program), are a labor of love.

“Our regular workers are making the bags, anyone who is available,” said Williams, explaining that the group members made the shoulder bags on a volunteer basis addition to their regular jobs. “We've given out just four so far. Almost all our materials are donated.”

This project is just one of many that will be needed in the coming months and years to help amputees recover and go on with their lives following the earthquake.

Center d’Art is affiliated with Partners In Health and Cange’s Bon Sauveur Parish Church.

Mirline, who fled Port-au-Prince with her two kids after the earthquake destroyed her house and workplace. She gathers water from an unprotected source where she now lives. Photographer: Esther Havens, courtesy of charity: water

PIH grants development associate Amanda Schwartz is currently in Haiti with Becky Straw of charity: water, a nonprofit organization that has partnered with PIH/ZL to bring clean water to impoverished communities. They recently co-wrote the following post.

We started Friday morning at JFK airport, boarding the second commercial flight into Haiti since the earthquake. Only four hours later, we were standing in the dust of the deadliest earthquake in 20 years.

Tents have become fixtures in the city, sprouting up in open lots and in between broken buildings. People buzz and shuffle along, selling goods, washing laundry and carrying on. Behind the activity –- which appears somewhat normal –- is a backdrop of colorless ruin. Here is proof of the new paradox in Port-au-Prince: bright clothes, loud music and a hustle reminiscent to NYC, but instead against concrete rubble and ashen bricks.

We head two hours outside of the capital to Cange in the Central Plateau, where PIH’s sister organization, Zanmi Lasante has been working in Haiti for nearly 25 years, implementing comprehensive primary health care and social services. Since health is impossible without potable water, PIH and Zanmi Lasante have partnered with charity: water, a New York based organization that has funded water points in surrounding villages in areas where PIH and Zanmi Lasante work.

At 9:30 pm on a Saturday evening the medical campus is abuzz with activity. We’re sharing a couch with two medical doctors from Ireland who are fighting exhaustion to complete patient notes before the next group of volunteers arrive tomorrow. It’s five weeks after the quake and a church next to the hospital is still serving as a trauma center for the overflow of patients. While they have been working around the clock with patients, today we started our mission to assess long-term water needs in the rural areas where hundreds of thousands of Haitians have migrated from Port-au-Prince.

Sunday morning started with a visit to Roche Pab 2, a community of 150 families without clean water. Since the quake, they have taken in 300 additional Haitians from Port-au-Prince. There, we met Mirline and her two young children, who fled Port-au-Prince after their house crumbled and the factory where she worked was destroyed. They spent three days sleeping in the street before hitching a ride to Roche Pab 2. They left Port-au-Prince for her mother’s home, where there are no jobs, schools or clean water.

Mirline’s story is echoed throughout the country, wherever Haitians are rushing to help each other. Later in the afternoon we met Luc, a proud father of eight in a village called Simon, where his family drinks from a contaminated pool of water along with 350 other families. When asked how the earthquake has affected him, he surprised us by stating that he donated his savings of 25 Haitian gourdes ($3.50 USD) to help survivors. “They are our brothers and sisters,” he said. “And they would support us if we were in that situation.”

In a country where one-third of all Haitians lacked clean water before the quake, Luc has shown us what it means to be a neighbor.

- Amanda Schwartz, PIH grants development associate
  Becky Straw, charity: water projects director
  Photographs by Esther Havens

Luc, center right, is a father of eight in a village named Simon. He and his family get their water from a contaminated stream.
Photographer: Esther Havens, courtesy of charity: water

With food stocks quickly dwindling, Partners In Health (PIH) plans to bring emergency crops to harvest in as little as 3 months.

More than a month after the January 12 earthquake, the need for earthquake-related emergency services has mostly passed. Now, PIH and Zanmi Lasante (ZL) – PIH’s partner organization in Haiti – must shift their focus to long-term care and helping the hundreds of thousands of people who urgently need shelter, water, sanitation, and food.

With cities destroyed and major roadways and ports obstructed or damaged, food is becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. The price of staples, like rice, oil, and beans, has risen dramatically. “Prices have skyrocketed – doubling and in some cases tripling,” says Jesula Pierre, a PIH logistics coordinator currently working in Haiti’s Central Plateau.

For people who lost their homes, jobs, savings, and income in the earthquake, the steep price increases put their families at severe risk of hunger and malnutrition. Additionally, many people in the areas where Zanmi Lasante works outside Port-au-Prince are now caring for family and friends who fled the city looking for shelter, food, and medical care.

PIH/ZL plans to help relieve the looming food crisis by pushing up this season’s first harvest date. The goal is to have a significant yield of crops in three months – several weeks earlier than a normal growing season. Zanmi Agrikol (ZA), the agricultural arm of ZL, will be in charge of the initiative.

In order to do this, the team has come up with a two-phase plan.

During phase one, the team identified 300 acres of fallow farmland where it has already begun plowing fields and planting a crop of precocious (fast growing) corn. The goal is to get food to the local community as soon as possible.

ZA is employing roughly 100 farmers during this phase of the project by working closely with local farmers' associations to train farming families to cultivate the crops communally in kombits (a group of people coming together for the good of a community). After the initial training, participating families will receive the supplies needed to cultivate the land: seeds, fertilizer, water from irrigation channels, access to tools, assistance with soil preparation, assistance with labor costs for planting and harvest, and technical assistance and support from ZA agronomists and technicians at every stage.

During phase two, which will begin in mid-March, the program will focus on mid- and long-term farming and nutritional goals. Whereas phase one looks to fill the local community’s immediate needs, phase two will provide training and support for hundreds of long-term, sustainable farms in the project’s chosen regions: Bois Jolie, Morne Michel, Balandry and Petite Montaigne.

In this phase, the team will identify and train 1,000 families who need assistance and support in order to farm their own lands. Once they receive training, the participants will receive:

• Seeds appropriate to the land and season
• Fertilizers and insect control
• Trees both for fruit and reforestation
• A goat and chickens
• Access to tool banks
• Assistance for land preparation
• Assistance and support from ZA agronomists and technicians
• Training in management and economics of secondary crops for trade
• Encouragement and help in forming secondary trade groups, especially groups organized and run by women
• Regular visits from an agricultural agent

ZA believes that this program will eventually enable the local farmers to feed their communities as well as thousands of the country’s displaced people. In the meantime, there will be an immediate impact on families affected by the earthquake and on Haiti’s local economies – both through the employment of farm laborers and in putting domestic food into local markets.  

 “ZA estimates that this phase of the program could impact at least 20,000 people, and will lead to the food and socio-economic security we are hoping to develop," says Gillaine Warne, Director of Zanmi Agrikol. ZA’s expanded role will be key to helping to stave off massive malnutrition throughout the country.

ZA was founded in 2002 to combat malnutrition in the Central Plateau and contribute to economic development in the region. Today, it provides the ingredients for therapeutic foods that are used in our malnutrition prevention and treatment program that served 5,651 children last year, and provides training to 240 families annually to help increase their harvests.

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article about ZA's work.

Top photo: Plowing a fallow field. The Zanmi Agrikol team hopes to harvest a crop of maize in as little as three months.
Bottom photo: Zanmi Agrikol staff showing off fruit tree saplings to distribute to participating farming families.

A package of brightly-colored, lovingly hand-drawn pictures recently arrived at PIH’s office in Boston, straight from Room 1, a classroom of third graders at William W. Henderson Inclusion Elementary School in Dorchester, MA.

“When I heard of the earthquake I thought it might be a good idea to help the children respond,” explained Claire Dewey, Room 1’s teacher.  “So they made the pictures.”  She suggested that the students think about what they would wish for the people of Haiti following the January 12 earthquake. The students then used colored pencils to craft pictures that symbolized their “Hopes for Haiti.”  From shelter and food, to medical care, to music, the students’ hopes capture a deep solidarity with people they have never met.

Watch a slideshow of Room 1’s hopes for Haiti below:

The 23 original pictures were sold at a school play as a fundraiser for Partners In Health.  But, recognizing that the pictures were as significant a gift as the money, in addition to a check, PIH also received color copies of every drawing, along with a note: “We in Room 1 want to encourage you and all Haitians and PIH staff with this book and small donation (but big from their hearts) with our best to you.”

Harry Potter Alliance Executive Director Andrew Slack presenting PIH's Jackson Compere with a check for $123,754.41.

The wizards Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger will soon be flying to help with earthquake relief efforts. Well, kind of. In recognition of a substantial contribution from the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA), an online community comprised of Harry Potter and sci-fi/fantasy fans, Partners In Health (PIH) is naming three Haiti-bound cargo planes, each filled thousands of pounds of relief supplies, after the wizarding trio made famous by J.K. Rowling’s best-selling books. HPA raised $123,754.41 USD for PIH’s Haiti relief effort through its Helping Haiti Heal campaign.

"The aircraft 'Harry', 'Ron' and 'Hermione' may not be able to cast spells, but the cargo they are carrying may as well be magic,” said PIH’s Director of Procurement Kathryn Kempton. “They will save thousands of lives by providing desperately needed medicines and supplies to the people of Haiti.”

“[HPA is] dedicated to using the examples of Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore to spread love and fight the Dark Arts in the real world,” said Andrew Slack, executive director of the HPA website (www.thehpalliance.org). HPA was formed in 2005 with the goal of raising awareness on issues such as global warming, poverty, and genocide. “[We] encourag[e] our members to hone the magic of their creativity in endeavoring to make the world a better place,” added Slack. The website has been viewed by 100,000 site visitors, many of whom belong to one of HPA’s 50 chapters.

HPA has introduced an emerging generation of young adults to the world of activism through an online world where they can impact local politics and contribute to global initiatives. To date, their projects have included: fundraising for NGO work in Darfur and Burma, donating books to Rwanda, calling Maine voters on behalf of the Mass Equality movement, raising awareness of Rwanda’s genocide in U.S. high schools, and registering first time voters with the Wizard Rock the Vote campaign in 2008.

HPA’s donation to PIH continues the organization’s history of giving. “I want to make sure that the HPA brings our fan community together to benefit an organization that is already in an authentic partnership with the Haitian people and intends to stay in [that partnership] long after the immediate effects of the earthquake subside," said Slack.

J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter book series, was proud to support HPA’s fundraising drive. “You cannot imagine how awed, moved and humbled I am to know that planes named Harry, Ron and Hermione are going to be flying off to help,” wrote Rowling in the online forum The Leaky Cauldron.  “I did not need this to remind me how extraordinary Harry’s fans are, but you keep giving me proof. THANK YOU!”

The fundraising campaign featured a live webcast with musical entertainment and performances; and a raffle contest in which contributors became eligible to win any number of 200-plus donated gifts, including: a boxed set of all seven Harry Potter books, signed by Rowling, with an accompanying handwritten note; a signed guitar owned by Tom Felton (the actor who plays Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies); a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (the final book of the series) signed by the movie’s cast; and a chance to have authors John Green or Maureen Johnson write a 1,000 word story inspired by the winner’s prompts.

“We are so grateful for the incredible generosity and creativity of the Harry Potter Alliance and the entire community involved with Helping Haiti Heal," said Kempton. "Partners In Health feels fortunate to receive this outpouring of support from such caring and compassionate people – thank you all!”

Harry Potter Alliance Executive Director Andrew Slack with PIH's schedule of flights that will bring desperately needed supplies and personnel into Haiti.

In order to meet the medical needs of those left homeless by the January 12 earthquake, Partners In Health (PIH) and its sister organization Zanmi Lasante (ZL) are running mobile medical clinics in four settlement sites where tens of thousands of displaced earthquake survivors are currently living.

The clinics provide comprehensive primary health care services, including reproductive health care, HIV testing, and malnutrition screening to an estimated population of 80,000-100,000 displaced people. Altogether, the mobile clinics treated nearly 4,200 patients during their first week of operation.

The four settlements, all located in or around Port-au-Prince, have been named: Building 2004, Caradeux, Park Jean Marie Vincent, and Delmas 3. PIH/ZL began working at these specific sites in collaboration with Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health (MSPP). In the largest settlement, Parc Jean Marie Vincent, PIH is also working in collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières-Belgium, which is supporting a women’s health clinic.

Each site is staffed by a team of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and lab technicians, reported Dr. Paul Pierre of PIH/ZL. About 230 health care workers in total are currently involved in the clinics.

In addition to these on-going clinics, PIH/ZL also supported organizations requesting help for providing health care services to groups of people with urgent needs. For example, on February 8, PIH/ZL and Fonkoze (a banking institution for poor communities) also co-organized a one-day mobile clinic at an orphanage – located at another temporary settlement called Tabarre 27. 

The most common symptoms for which patients sought treatment include fever, abdominal pain, chest congestion, and headache.

Zanmi Lasante will work to provide necessary services and referrals to patients who require follow up care, including pregnant women and HIV-positive patients. 

In addition to treating patients’ medical needs, PIH/ZL is also working with Haitian grassroots groups and other organizations to provide other basic needs. These organizations include ACTED, which is working as camp managers at a planned settlement camp; and Operation Blessing, an organization installing water purification systems. PIH/ZL is also advocating for other organizations to follow through on helping to tackle the current largest challenges--providing food, sanitation, and shelter at these settlements. 

Top photo: ZL Clinician at one of the mobile clinics with a patient.
Bottom photo: An orderly line of patients waiting to see a clinician at one of the PIH/ZL mobile clinics.

Lindsay Olinde and Katie Delbecq are not only standing with Haiti, they are striding with Haiti—and bringing others along for the journey. The two first-year graduate students at the Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, organized the “Stride With Haiti” campaign to raise money and support for Partners In Health.

Their website, www.stridewithhaiti.com is an open source resource for organizing fundraising events—offering tools and advice for athletes looking to support PIH in Haiti through sporting events. The site includes downloads for publicity posters, designs for t-shirts, as well as a link to PIH’s event organizing resource webpage.

The inspiration for these events originates with Lindsay’s close friend, Chris Strock, an engineer working with PIH in Haiti. Both women are also interested in the geological phenomena of earthquakes and tectonic shifts.

Stride With Haiti began as a marathon to raise money for PIH. “[The race was] intended as a way to get athletes (or the mildly athletically inclined) to run/play/etc. for PIH,” wrote Lindsay in an email.

Taking place over the Valentine’s Day weekend, the event raised over $1,000 for PIH.

Not content to stop there, Stride With Haiti began helping other communities organize similar events. On February 20, a group in Baton Rouge, LA will walk around City Park Lake. On March 27, a 10K race is scheduled in Richmond, VA.

In addition to the races, Katie and Lindsay are also brewing up the natural companion to any sporting event—beer. They are planning social events and selling six-packs of homebrewed beer to raise money for PIH.

Read more about their activities at www.stridewithhaiti.com.

PIH Lesotho provides health care at seven rural mountain health clinics like this one in Nohana.

The tiny landlocked country of Lesotho in southern Africa is literally on the other side of the world from Haiti. However, PIH’s sister organizations in both countries share a strong bond of solidarity.

“We are a big family!” wrote Dr. Hind Satti, country director for PIH’s project in Lesotho. “The suffering and tragedy that happened in Haiti moved all of us... We are ready to help if you need us.”

In an act of solidarity, the Partners In Health staff in Lesotho have been working to help raise money for earthquake relief and rebuilding projects in Haiti—collecting about $20,000 USD—a major contribution by any standard, but particularly considering that Lesotho has a lower per capita GDP than the poorest country in the western hemisphere—Haiti.

One of the staff, a woman who cleans office, put her contribution into perspective. “Is it not too much for you?” Dr. Satti had asked the cleaner, concerned that donating would be financially difficult for her family. “I know at the end of the day, I will go home,” the cleaner assured her, “I will find papa  [corn meal porridge] to eat, but those people, they have lost everything.”

Cross-site collaboration makes the expansion and dissemination of our work possible. In particular, our almost 25 years of experience in Haiti has helped our projects in Africa to flourish. Such an exchange of resources, technology, and knowledge between developing countries is often referred to as a south-south collaboration. Since the Lesotho project began in 2006, staff from Zanmi Lasante in Haiti, including Dr. Jonas Rigodon, have traveled to Lesotho to help the new project get off the ground.

In addition to Lesotho, we’ve reported on the support our Haiti team received from our sister organization in Rwanda.

Find out more about PIH Lesotho.

Last week, Bill O'Reilly of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor endorsed Partners In Health's work to help relieve and rebuild Haiti following the January 12 earthquake.

"They are doing the right thing, they really are," said O'Reilly on his show, which aired on February 12.

"[PIH] works alongside 4,600 Haitians. They don't give block grants to Haiti’s government… what they do is accompaniment," added Geraldo Rivera, a regular commentator on The O'Reilly Factor. "They hire the Haitians, they train the Haitians to be nurses and doctors and health care professionals.”

On a previous episode, O'Reilly had questioned how PIH would use donations, specifically donations coming from MTV's Hope for Haiti Now telethon. The event raised $8 million for Partners In Health. Read a transcript from the segment below.

Transcript from The O'Reilly Factor, February 12, 2010.

Bill O'Reilly: Geraldo is our eyes and ears on the Haiti telethon spending deal. We did have an update on Partners In Health. We laced them last week. We told you not to give any money to this charity because they would not tell us what was going on with the 8 million they have received. They did call us and they apologized. And now we believe that they are doing the right thing.

Geraldo Rivera: They really are, I think. First of all, the 22-year-old organization, Ted Constan and I had a great talk, he's their spokesman

Bill O'Reilly: You are confident all the money is going where it should go?

Geraldo Rivera: I am confident about the money. They are working alongside 4,600 Haitians. They don't give block grants to the Haiti government. They recognize that would be throwing money down the toilet. What they do is what they call accompaniment. They hire the Haitians, they train the Haitians to be nurses and doctors and health care professionals.

Bill O'Reilly: They are doing the right thing--that's Partners In Health.

Geraldo Rivera: They are doing the right thing.

Geraldo Rivera: They lament the fact that the Haitian story has disappeared from the headlines and all anyone is talking about is the 10 missionaries who have been arrested for kidnapping.

Bill O'Reilly: Okay. We have information by the Haitian Health Foundation, which money--I give to them on billoreilly.com. So we haven't disappeared it. Overall we have 30 seconds. You happy with the telethon? You think it did the good thing in the money getting where it should go as it stands now?

Geraldo Rivera: I can only report on the first 35 million. I am extremely impressed. I think that everybody who gave should feel a sense of satisfaction that they did the right thing for righteous cause.

Bill O'Reilly: You and I do not have to go to [George] Clooney's house?

Geraldo Rivera: We do not.

Bill O'Reilly: All right. Thank god, ladies and gentlemen. Has got to have a rottweiler that guy.

Join PIH physician Dr. Evan Lyon for a presentation on his recent trip to Haiti and a Q&A.

Dr. Evan Lyon has been a volunteer physician with Partners in Health/Zanmi Lasante for over a decade. He participated in PIH's initial response to the earthquake on January 12, 2010 - just over one month ago. Since that time, the official death toll has reached 230,000 and continues to climb. At least 1.5 million are out of their homes - many have migrated back to the countryside. Those who remain in and around Port-au-Prince occupy makeshift refugee centers.

Dr. Lyon spoke about his two weeks at the University General Hospital (HUEH) in Port-au-Prince where PIH has helped coordinate efforts to bring this--the largest hospital in Haiti and its only public teaching hospital--back into a functional facility. .

The webcast took place at 8:00 pm EST on Tuesday, February 16. Watch a recording of the webcast below.

Suggested background reading:

"Haiti: A Creditor, not a Debtor" by Naomi Klein
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100301/klein

"'Break Hearts Open' in Haiti" by Evan Lyon:
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/haitiearthquake/2010/02/20102272125725938.html

"Fault Lines: The Politics of Rebuilding in Haiti"
Video:http://tinyurl.com/ydz7z7p

Dr. Jim Yong Kim

PIH co-founder and current Dartmouth College President Dr. Jim Yong Kim recently announced that Dartmouth will be accepting some undergraduate and graduate/professional school students displaced by Haiti's January 12 earthquake.

"We'll do everything we can so that their educational experience is not interrupted," Dr. Kim told Steven Zind of Vermont Public Radio. "If there's one thing Haiti does not need is to have its leaders have their educations thwarted in this process."

Dr. Kim said his decision was encouraged by fellow PIH co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer and President Bill Clinton, United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti. Officials at Dartmouth are still working out the details of this offer. Dr. Kim hopes that the announcement will encourage other colleges to do the same.

"Most likely, we will ask members of the Dartmouth Community to accept some students into their homes as we did for students affected by [Hurricane] Katrina,"said Molly Bode, a Dartmouth alumna and a Presidential Fellow in Global Studies & Higher Education, who is coordinating Dartmouth's Haiti response.

Before the earthquake, Port-au-Prince was home to a number of Haiti's major colleges and universities. These include Université d'État d'Haïti (The State University of Haiti), the country's largest university, Quisqueya University, and Université des Caraïbes (University of the Caribbean). In addition, there were also a number of smaller religious schools, including: Institution Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague, École Sainte-Rose-de-Lima, École Saint-Jean-Marie Vianney, Institution du Sacré-Coeur, and Collège Anne-Marie Javouhey.

The full extent of each school's losses are not yet known, though images posted on Ecole Supérieure d'Infotronique d'Haiti's website suggest that damages will be extensive. Ecole Supérieure d'Infotronique d'Haiti's website is one of the few college
websites from the region to be updated since January 12.

Hundreds of colleges around the U.S. opened their doors to the tens of thousands of students displaced by Hurricane Katrina during the 2005-2006 academic year. Though students were removed from their home schools, the internet allowed students from the New Orleans area to stay at least partially connected to their home institutions.

It will be months before Haitian officials can fairly assess the medium to long-term impact the earthquake will have had on the capital city's colleges and universities.

Dok Pagenel

Among the hundreds of thousands of victims of the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti was a beloved doctor, Dr. Pagenel, from PIH’s sister organization Zanmi Lasante (ZL).  Dok Pagenel, as he was known, was the ZL Director for Training and Medical Education and the Director of the Caribbean HIV/AIDS Regional Training Center—a collaboration between ZL, the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and the University of Washington I-TECH program. Dok Pagenel had advanced training in Family Practice at the Justinian Hospital program in Cap Haitian and had studied community health in Montreal, Canada.  With these credentials, he returned to Haiti in 2007 to work in Haiti’s rural, isolated Central Plateau to serve the poor and raise the academic standards of medicine within our programs.

While his body has yet to be recovered, memorials held in advance of the one month anniversary of the quake at the nine ZL-supported clinics throughout Haiti were marked by an outpouring of remembrance and love for Dok Pagenel. “Pagenel was a humanist and philosopher—who was rarely seen without book in his hand,” said one of his closest friends, Dr. Jennifer Severe, the Director of the TB/HIV Program in Cerca La Source. “He loved reading the bible, listening to gospel music and learning languages [he spoke English, Spanish, German and French as well as Haitian Creole]. He was always ready to deepen any discussion medical or otherwise with tenets of philosophy, history, religion or politics.” 

Dok Pagenel also had a driving desire to increase medical knowledge--his own and that of the entire ZL staff. As such, he was responsible for coordinating the “Wednesday Academic,” a well-attended weekly lecture series at ZL sites. 

Dr. Desire Roland, a long time friend of Dr. Pagenel looks to his spirit to guide Haiti’s future, “Dok Pagenel was a dynamic man with a strong personality who will remain an example to all those working to reconstruct Haiti to reflect the determination and will of the Haitian people.”

“Dr. Pagenel truly lived the term preferential option for the poor,” said PIH’s Clinical Director in Haiti, Dr. Louise Ivers. “He could have worked anywhere but he decided to work in one of the most isolated parts of Haiti to serve his people. On January 12^th, Dok Pagenel had left Hinche, Haiti to attend a meeting in Port Au Prince. He was to lead Zanmi Lasante’s effort within PAHO/WHO to address neglected tropical diseases in Haiti, starting with filariasis. In Dr. Pagenel’s last note he wrote of engaging the international health community in this important dialogue. It is even harder to accept Dok Pagenel’s death at Zanmi Lasante as our hearts were already broken when, on September 1, 2009, Dr. Josue Augustin was murdered. It’s as if we’ve just been hit again by something we can’t believe nor comprehend.” To lose a leader of Dok Pagenel’s stature and grace leaves an indelible mark on our family.

Dok Pagenel’s life will be celebrated through the continuation of thoughtful and regular scholarship at ZL.  On February 27, 2010, at the first convocation of twenty doctors as Fellows in Global Health Implementation within the Division of Global Health Equity at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dr. Mario Pagenel will be among the honorees.  In his personal statement submitted in advance of the Fellowship convocation Dok Pagenel wrote the following:

Since I began my work at Zanmi Lasante in early 2007, I have devoted myself to ensuring that the poorest are able to secure access to basic health care… I had the most thrilling experience of my life as HIV/AIDS & TB Program Manager.  I realized that working in a resource-poor community required not only knowledge and skills but also appeals to the heart of health care providers.  It takes energy, commitment and empathy towards human suffering to face the daily challenges of caring for people living with HIV in Central Plateau, the poorest area in the Western Hemisphere.  Zanmi Lasante has shown me that solidarity with the underserved is always possible and it is not so much the lack of means in the world but rather the lack of will.

We go forward with the work and will of Dr. Mario Pagenel in our hearts. Dok Pagenel, nou pap janm bliye’w.

By Joia Mukherjee and Cate Oswald with contributions from the Zanmi Lasante Staff.

 
Arcade Fire, a Canadian rock band with Haitian roots, has taken their support of PIH to a whole new level. 

In partnership with the National Football League (which has also made a donation to PIH’s Haiti relief efforts), the band agreed to license their hit song “Wake Up” to the NFL for a series of commercials, which were first aired at the Super Bowl last weekend.  All proceeds from this licensing will benefit PIH.

Watch one of the commercials below.

Regine and Win visiting PIH's projects in Haiti in 2008. Read about their visit.

The band has supported PIH's work in Haiti for years. After reading Tracy Kidder’s book Mountains Beyond Mountains, the group contacted PIH to ask how they could help. Since then, their support has included organizing special fundraising events, giving a portion of ticket sales from recent concert tours to support PIH’s work, and donating proceeds from special merchandise sold at their shows and on their website.

In addition, the band’s relationship with Haiti runs deep. Founded by Win Butler and his wife Régine Chassagne in Montreal in 2003, the pair has always remembered Régine’s Haitian roots—her family emigrated from Haiti to Canada before she was born. Fans know that Win sometimes decorates his guitar with the Haitian proverb “sak vide pa kanpe”—”an empty sack cannot stand up”—as a reminder of the crushing poverty that afflicts Haiti.

In a recent interview, Régine discussed Haiti and her support for Partners In Health. Watch the interview below.

Visit Arcade Fire's website.

Hundreds of thousands of people are living in shelters made of scraps of fabric, cardboard, and wood.

There was rain in Port-au-Prince yesterday morning. “Not just a little rain—a proper one,” said PIH clinical director Dr. Louise Ivers. “The [rainy] season has started.”

With hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors now living in temporary settlements for displaced people left without shelter following the January 12 earthquake, bad weather could mean catastrophe. People living in these settlements only have tattered pieces of cloth and cardboard and scraps of wood to shelter their families from the elements.

“There is more and more misery,” said Dr. Ivers.

Until now, the weather has mercifully remained clear. Today’s rain suggests a dangerously early rainy season for Haiti, which usually doesn’t begin until around April.

Although PIH and partner organizations are working to help bring tents and other temporary housing structures to those most in need,  the sheer numbers of those in need—and the complications involved in procuring, shipping, and distributing housing supplies and material—requires the international community to work with Haiti’s government to bring  housing solutions. In addition, long term housing and resettlement plans are also needed.  The early start of the rainy season brings a new urgency for these efforts.

In addition to shelter issues, rainy weather brings a host other of potential problems for Haiti. In the crowded temporary settlement camps, pools of stagnant water could spell a potential malaria outbreak. With little sanitation at these settlements, rains could contaminate drinking water supplies, leading to waterborne diseases such as typhoid and dysentery.

Bad weather is also a concern for the structural integrity of buildings already damaged by the earthquake. Collapsed buildings and landslides caused by rains could also render roads impassable, complicating relief and recovery efforts in general.

With the hurricane season just a few months away, PIH is urging the international community to help form and carry out a large-scale action plan immediately. To not do so would be unconscionable.

In response to initiatives in Congress, including legislation introduced in the Senate by Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Richard Lugar (R-IN), and in the House by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced last week that the U. S. will work with foreign governments and major international financial institutions, like the IMF and World Bank, to relieve all of Haiti’s current $1.051 billion debt. In addition, Geithner intends to seek a commitment from other donors that aid given to Haiti in the coming weeks and months will arrive in the form of grants, and not loans.

Tens of thousands of earthquake survivors are now living in temporary settlements like this one--environments where a typhoid outbreak could spread very quickly.
Residents at a temporary settlement filling containers with clean water from a filtration system installed by Operation Blessing. Systems like these can help prevent a typhoid outbreak.

A 34-year-old man suffering from fever, diarrhea, fatigue, and acute pain in his abdomen recently arrived at the General Hospital (HUEH) in Port-au-Prince, where a Partners In Health/Zanmi Lasante-affiliated medical team examined him.

X-rays revealed a tear in the patient’s peritoneum, the membrane lining the abdomen. The diagnosis: typhoid.

Typhoid is a disease most often present in poor communities in developing countries. The illness is transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with feces from an infected person. The infection leaves a person dehydrated, diarrheic, and feverish. In more extreme cases, the bacteria can perforate the intestinal wall. The abdominal damage leaves the patient susceptible to a variety of subsequent stomach and intestinal conditions. If left untreated, the bacteria will spread to other organs. Perforations in the abdominal wall often require surgery.

Typhoid is not fatal if treated. The fatality rate in untreated populations ranges between 10 and 25 percent. A surgical team at HUEH operated on the typhoid patient that evening, and put him on a course of antibiotics. He is now recovering.

Although this patient probably contracted the disease before the earthquake (his symptoms first started about 2 months ago), physicians in Haiti worry that the unsanitary and crowded conditions in the displacement camps surrounding Port-au-Prince could fuel outbreaks of typhoid. Tens of thousands of people are now residing in such settlements where typhoid can spread very quickly.

PIH/ZL, the Haitian Ministry of Health, and other partner organizations are working to prevent such outbreaks by finding ways to provide clean water and sanitation. In addition, having medical facilities with surgical resources that are able to treat patients suffering from typhoid is also a concern. The collapse and severe damaging of various major medical centers in and around the capital has seriously limited surgical resources.

Dr. Natasha Archer, a PIH physician currently working at the HUEH, recently sent an email calling attention to the 34-year old patient, and stressed the importance of having capable medical facilities.

Sent: Sunday, February 07, 2010 8:56 AM
Subject: Overnight events

This is an example of the excellent care volunteer teams with PIH have been able to provide for the people of Haiti 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It also highlights the desperate need for the access to essential and emergency surgical care in resource-limited settings. With the tragedy in Haiti and resulting lack of clean water and food, a number of typhoid cases will present to the hospital in the next 6-12 months if not years to come. Many of those will lead to abdominal perforations that require surgical care and thus the development of anesthesiology and surgery departments at the General Hospital. It is critical that we continue to focus our efforts on acquiring funds to develop and maintain the education and training of such physicians in resource-limited settings.  It will save lives. 

--Natasha

Dr. Archer is a medical resident at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Harvard and Haiti: A collaborative response to the January 12 earthquake

Dr. Paul Farmer and his colleagues from Harvard Medical School, Partners In Health
and Brigham and Women’s Hospital provided an update on the situation in Haiti
since the January 12 earthquake.

Watch a video of the webcast. (RealPlayer required to view)

Paul Farmer, MD, PhD
Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Social Medicine and Chair, Department of Global Health
and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Chief, Division of Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Co-founder, Partners In Health
United Nations Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti

Medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer is a founding director of Partners In Health (PIH),
an international non-profit organization that provides direct health care services and has undertaken
research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty.  For more than
twenty years, PIH has been providing vital health care services in Haiti’s Central Plateau and Artibonite Valley. 

Working alongside the Ministry of Health to serve a catchment area of 1.2 million people, PIH has
become one of the largest health care providers in the country.  PIH had more than 100 doctors,
600 nurses, and a total of 4,000 employees on the ground in Haiti working from twelve existing PIH
medical facilities in Haiti before the earthquake struck on January 12.
 
Dr. Paul Farmer was joined by:

Jeffrey S. Flier, MD, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Ophelia Dahl, President and Executive Director, Partners in Health
David Walton, MD, PIH Physician and Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Claire Pierre, MD, Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance
Koji Nakashima, MD, PIH Physician and Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital

A month after the earthquake, Haiti is now threatened by another devastating public health disaster -- epidemics of infectious diseases and untreated chronic illnesses in squatter communities where tens of thousands of people are crowded together with no sanitation facilities and little access to clean water and food.

Early one morning under an already scorching sun, a team of about 50 doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and lab technicians from Zanmi Lasante, PIH's sister organization, drove to an open field adjacent to one of these informal settlements--a patchwork of shelters pieced together from tattered sheets of cloth, cardboard, and scraps of wood, with an estimated population of 40,000. Watch a slideshow below.

Within 45 minutes, the Zanmi Lasante team had erected a large tent, filled most of it with tables and chairs for 20 consulting stations, created and stocked a small pharmacy and lab, and established an orderly system for checking patients in and sending them to the next available doctor. Over the next six hours, they saw and treated more than 500 patients -- children with coughs and diarrhea, adults with wounds and fevers, an elderly woman with diabetes who went into shock and was rushed to a hospital.

Zanmi Lasante has been doing exactly this kind of work--working in partnership with the residents of destitute communities to provide quality health care and essential social services--for over 25 years.

Walt Ratterman

“A redwood has fallen in the forest,” read a Facebook message posted Monday evening. “And its impact is being felt from Burma, to Sudan, to Peru, to Pakistan, to Rwanda, to Haiti.”

On Sunday night, the remains of Walt Ratterman, philanthropist and co-founder of SunEnergy Power International, were discovered in the rubble of the collapsed Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince. Walt had been listed as missing since the earthquake on January 12.

Just prior to the earthquake, Walt had been working with our partners at the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) to install solar power systems at a hospital in Boucan Carre, which is operated in a joint partnership between PIH/Zanmi Lasante and the Haitian Ministry of Health. These solar panels helped ensure that electricity (to power lights and medical equipment) was one less thing the staff had to worry about when they began treating patients injured in the Earthquake—a stark contrast to hospitals on the traditional electric grid that were forced to care for patients and even perform surgeries via candles and flashlights (read more).

Installing solar panels at the Boucan Carre hospital last year.

“Walt was brilliant, tireless, resourceful and passionately committed to social justice,” said Ted Constan, PIH Chief Program Officer. “He possessed a rare combination of technical expertise and sensitivity to the complexities of working in the developing world.”

SunEnergy Power International, the  nonprofit co-founded by Walt, works in 30 countries to promote renewable energy in remote, rural regions of the world. They do this by not only installing the equipment, but also  training local technicians on how to design, install, and maintain systems so that they are sustainably maintained for years to come. Walt ensured that building local capacity was a priority for every project he worked on.

“He kept our focus not just on installing equipment, but on building the human capacity locally for a sustainable future. We all miss our friend profoundly, and will honor his life by continuing to fulfill his vision,” said Ted.

Before working to install the solar panels at Boucan Carre, Walt had also worked with our partners to provide solar power and train local technicians at health clinics in rural Rwanda, Burundi, and Lesotho.

“The lights that [Walt] turned on out here in our rural health clinics two years ago are still on!” wrote Jeremy Keeton from PIH’s project in Lesotho. “Women deliver babies in rooms lit by [him], doctors work with x-ray machines and lab equipment to see what ails our patients instead of trying to guess… [Walt] touched people all over the world with his compassion, diligent work, and humanity.”

Watch a live webcast of experts from Harvard Medical School, Partners In Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital as they give an update on the situation in Haiti since the January 12 earthquake. Panelists include PIH co-founder Paul Farmer, as well as:

Jeffrey S. Flier, MD, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Ophelia Dahl, Executive Director, Partners In Health
David Walton, MD, Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital and PIH physician in Haiti
Claire Pierre, MD, Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance
Koji Nakashima, MD, Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital and PIH physician in Haiti

The webcast begins at 11:50 am EST on Thursday, February 11. 

Watch Live at: http://hms.harvard.edu/public/haiti/

Video will also be available on the site following Thursday’s program.

Antibiotics at a makeshift pharmacy in Port-au-Prince. Drugs like these can fight infections and sepsis.
An injured leg gets a cast. Proper wound care can prevent amputations.

Last week, a pregnant woman arrived at Port-au-Prince’s General Hospital (HUEH) seeking treatment for month-old, infected lacerations covering her feet.

“We were so aware that compared to the really serious cases being brought in, her injuries may have seemed minor,” said Johanna Berrigan, a physician assistant with the House of Grace Catholic Worker in Philadelphia, who aided in bringing the woman to HUEH. “Yet, I believe that she would have joined the statistics of the many who had to have subsequent amputations,” she added. “She was in so much pain.”

Having not received any healthcare assistance since the earthquake because she worried that doing so would take valuable resources away from patients with more acute needs, the expectant mother was now in danger of losing a foot, or worse.

These types of infections, if left untreated, damage the effected limb’s tissue and blood vessels to such an extent that amputation is often the patient’s only remaining option.

Failure to remove the limb can also lead to sepsis, a condition wherein the original wound’s infection spreads throughout the body via the bloodstream. Sepsis will lead to death if left untreated long enough. The woman’s pregnancy amplified this threat. 

Berrigan and her team were surprised to find that PIH/Zanmi Lasante physicians at HUEH immediately put the woman on an aggressive antibiotic regimen, and cleaned and bandaged her wounds. Ultimately, this saved both her feet. Berrigan praises PIH’s healthcare workers, saying, “The staff at the hospital, even under the pressing demands, were organized, respectful, and very helpful."  

As the initial emergency relief efforts in Haiti end, the PIH medical team fears that many more people with sepsis and infected wounds similar to this woman’s will begin showing up at local clinics.

The woman, who is about six months pregnant, is now resting at home and is expected to make a full recovery. Healthcare workers affiliated with Berrigan's project in Ti Place Cazeau continue to follow up with her treatment. 

The news program Chronicle HD on Boston’s ABC affiliate, WCVB-TV Channel 5, recently aired a special three-part program detailing Partners In Health’s medical response to Haiti’s January 12 earthquake. Featuring interviews with PIH co-founders Ophelia Dahl, Paul Farmer, and Thomas White, the program raises local awareness for both PIH and the work that still needs to occur in Haiti. In addition to covering Haiti’s general post-earthquake medical situation, the special documents the organization’s history and its guiding humanitarian principles. Watch the episode below.

Partners in Health Haiti Relief Special from BWH Public Affairs on Vimeo.

Staff from Zanmi Agrikol working to prepare fields for an emergency harvest of maize.

The cost of a bag of rice has increased dramatically in the weeks since the January 12th earthquake, reports PIH Clinical Director Louise Ivers. The forty-plus percent markup, from $30 USD (1,207 Haitian Gourdes) to $42 USD (1,690 Haitian Gourdes) for a 25 kg (55.1lbs) sack, offers further evidence that the people of Haiti will face a variety of post-quake difficulties as the prices of staple foods continue to rise.

Over half the population of Haiti lives on less than $1 per day. Families already under difficulty trying to feed their own households are being asked to take in others—sometimes numbering up to 25 people—including relatives and neighbors who have lost their homes, livelihoods, and breadwinning-family members in the earthquake.

Access to long-term employment opportunities have all but disappeared following the earthquake. And both small urban gardens located in the city, as well as road and air access to larger outlying farms were destroyed. What little stock there is will surely be depleted in 3 months, say PIH experts, and the period between then and the first normal harvest will be desperate. Food aid may well be available in Port-au-Prince, although staff working in the city have yet to see any evidence of it. What aid there is will likely only be a short-term band-aid.

PIH/Zanmi Lasante and our agricultural sister organization Zanmi Agrikol, have come up with a plan to try and relieve this situation and bring first harvests of food to the region in as little as 3 months. This emergency initiative is working to identify all lands that are not currently under cultivation, or lying fallow. The team will then prepare and plant a series of crops that, with the help of fertilizers and water from irrigation (as it is currently Haiti’s dry season) will be harvested in three months.

Haiti last experienced a food crisis in 2008 when the price of rice rose 141% in the space of a few months, creating immense hardship and exacerbating pediatric malnutrition. Read more.

Ophelia Dahl, the Executive Director of Partners In Health (PIH), issued a statement expressing profound gratitude and a firm commitment to rebuild and strengthen the health care system in Haiti after the Entertainment Industry Foundation announced the first disbursement of grants from the “Hope for Haiti Now” telethon, which was hosted by MTV on January 22. PIH, one of six beneficiaries of the telethon, will receive $8 million in the first round of grants.

"All of us at Partners In Health are overwhelmed by the generosity of people around the world who donated to the Hope for Haiti Now telethon. We want to thank the artists who gave of their time and celebrity to generate support and all those in the entertainment industry who made this remarkable event possible.

“We are honored and forever grateful to be one of the organizations benefitting from this extraordinary expression of solidarity with the Haitian people. The funds will support PIH’s immediate efforts to provide medical care and critical supplies to those affected by the earthquake, as well as PIH’s long term strategy to build back Haiti better than before.”

With 12 existing hospitals and health centers in the Central Plateau and Artibonite regions north of Port-au-Prince, with more than 4,000 local staff (including more than 100 doctors, nearly 600 nurses and nursing assistants, and thousands of community health workers), and with an annual budget for operations in Haiti of more than $25 million before the earthquake, PIH was uniquely well-positioned to respond to the disaster. Starting just hours after the earthquake, PIH and our partners at Zanmi Lasante (our sister organization in Haiti) have mobilized resources to provide emergency medical care both at facilities in Port-au-Prince that we helped staff, equip, and supply, and at our hospitals two hours north of the city that were flooded by thousands of earthquake victims fleeing the capital. By Friday, February 5, PIH had deployed 287 medical personnel (mostly surgeons, surgical nurses, and anesthetists) to Haiti and had flown 81 planes, loaded with people and 75 tons of urgently needed medical equipment and supplies.

The $8 million provided by the Hope for Haiti Now telethon will be used to implement a strategy for immediate and long-term relief with four main goals:

1. To provide emergency medical care, including surgical, post-operative, and rehabilitative care, through several sites in Port-au-Prince and our existing network of 12 clinical facilities in the Central Plateau and Artibonite.
2. To strengthen the long-term capacity of the public health system both in Port-au-Prince and in the Central Plateau and Artibonite, by rebuilding and expanding infrastructure; providing essential medicines, equipment and supplies; recruiting, training, and supervising staff; installing and improving systems for pharmacy management and electronic medical records; and expanding surgical capacity.
3. To rebuild and improve the national medical and nursing education system by providing training and technical assistance at Haiti’s National University Hospital in Port-au-Prince, establishing a new teaching hospital in the town of Mirebalais in the Central Plateau, and training an adequate supply of physical therapists and physical medicine and rehabilitation doctors to meet the needs of tens of thousands of earthquake victims with major injuries and long-term disabilities.
4. To provide medium and long-term rehabilitation, social support, and economic assistance to earthquake survivors and displaced people who relocate to the Central Plateau and Artibonite. In these areas where PIH is the main provider of health care in partnership with the Haitian Ministry of Health, the population is expected to increase by 500,000 people or more.

The telethon funds will be used in two distinct phases. During the first six months, the primary areas of expenditure will include: medical and surgical care to earthquake victims; community-based care and mobile clinic outreach; immediate social support and meeting basic needs (such as food, water, sanitation, and shelter) of survivors.

The second phase will extend through two years, during which the main uses of funds will be: providing long-term care (including physical therapy, rehabilitation and psychological support services) for earthquake survivors; strengthening public sector health systems; expanding surgical capacity; strengthening Haiti’s medical education system; and expanding social support, community development, and poverty alleviation programs.

Looking ahead, Ophelia Dahl emphasized PIH’s long-term commitment to Haiti. “Going forward, PIH will continue to work with the Ministry of Health in Haiti to strengthen the public health infrastructure, mobilize people at the grassroots level to participate in the health care system and address the mid- and long-term health, social, and economic ramifications of the resettlement of thousands of people who have lost their homes. PIH will continue to stand with Haiti in the months and years to come as we have for the past 25 years.”

Read more and watch performances from the telethon.

Last Sunday, January 31^st, the Boston-based Longwood Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and New England Conservatory (NEC) hosted a benefit concert, Symphonic Relief for Haiti, at NEC’s Jordan Hall. LSO’s concert aimed to raise money for Partners In Health’s Haitian relief effort, Stand With Haiti. The show featured a variety of musicians who are also healthcare professionals from various Boston-area hospital and medical centers. In addition, the LSO was joined by NEC faculty Paula Robison and Richard Stoltzman and two Haitian musicians, NEC student Jean Bernard Cerin and Project STEP/Preparatory student Aurélie Théramène, A Far Cry chamber orchestra, and the Boston Children's Chorus. Student musicians from NEC, Longy School of Music, Boston Conservatory, and Boston University augmented the instrumental ensembles.

The concert will be rebroadcast this coming Sunday, February 7, 2010, on Boston’s WBZ, Channel 38, at 10 p.m. Music from last week’s concert will be played alongside a slideshow of recent images taken by PIH staff and healthcare workers in Haiti. Dr. Lisa M. Wong, President of the LSO, hopes that the airing of the concert will allow the group to meet its fundraising goal of $100,000. To date, the LSO has raised over $75,000 for PIH’s efforts in Haiti. Help LSO meet its goal by watching the show this weekend and donating to this amazing cause!

Donations to PIH can be made through the LSO’s donation page: http://act.pih.org/page/outreach/view/haitiearthquake/symphonicrelief

Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) introduced the Debt Relief for Earthquake Recovery in Haiti Act of 2010 (H.R. 4573) to the U. S. House of Representatives on Thursday. The legislation would cancel Haiti’s debt to multilateral financial institutions so that “the nation can focus its limited resources on rebuilding after the devastating earthquake and not be burdened by payments to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other creditors.” Representative Waters’ office stated that the bill has more than thirty bipartisan cosponsors.

“The array of problems that Haiti faces right now is compounded by foreign debt,” said Congresswoman Waters. “I am encouraged by initial statements by World Bank President Robert Zoellick and IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn that they are already considering measures to cancel Haiti’s debt. I encourage their prospective debt cancellation plans to also include providing grants so that Haiti can begin the arduous process of rebuilding.”

The Debt Relief legislation would require the Treasury Department to “use the voice, vote and influence of the United States in multilateral financial institutions” as it worked to: cancel all debts owed by Haiti to such institutions; suspend Haiti’s debt service payments to such institutions until such time as the debts are canceled completely; and, provide additional assistance to Haiti in the form of grants so that Haiti does not accumulate additional debts. The bill also requires the Treasury Department to begin immediate efforts to ensure that other bilateral, multilateral, and private creditors cancel immediately and completely all debts owed by Haiti to such creditors.

Representative Waters and 93 fellow Democrat Representatives sent a signed letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Wednesday, February 3, asking international communities for their help in eliminating Haiti’s debt obligations. The letter also encouraged members on the executive boards of lending institutions to vote for the relief of Haitian debt. More specifically, in that letter the House Democrats asked that the upcoming $100 million loan from the IMF be given to the Haitian government in the form of a grant.

On June 30, 2009, Haiti was granted $1.2 billion of debt relief by reaching the completion point under the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative approved by the Boards of the International Development Association (IDA) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). To reach the completion point, Haiti carried out a number of reforms aimed at establishing a more stable macroeconomic environment and at implementing its national poverty reduction strategy. President René Préval’s government also instituted aggressive changes in the nation’s education and healthcare systems.

Despite these recent accomplishments, the January 12 earthquake has the potential to set the country back many years. On this subject, Congresswoman Waters says, “Haiti had been making progress since suffering extensive damage by a series of hurricanes in 2008, and last year’s debt cancellation helped to move Haiti in the right direction. Unfortunately, it seems like one step forward, three steps back. We cannot allow Haiti to bear the additional burden of expensive debt payments following this most recent tragedy.”

Relieving Haiti’s current debt and offering future financial assistance in the form of grants, as opposed to loans, offers the country an honest chance at rebuilding its social and economic frameworks. The country’s high death toll and displacement rates following the January 12 earthquake have devastated this small, already impoverished nation. We need to encourage the U. S. Congress and multilateral financial institutions to forgive Haiti’s current debt and to offer immediate assistance in the form of nonobligatory grants.

Haiti’s $709 million debt to the international financial institutions breaks down as follows: Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), $447 million; International Monetary Fund (IMF), $165 million; International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), $58 million; World Bank, $39 million.

Last week, Senators Chris Dodd and Richard Lugar introduced debt relief legislation in the U.S. Senate.

PIH Director of Communications Andrew Marx wrote this diary.

I landed in Port-au-Prince early on Wednesday morning along with our Chief Program Officer, Ted Constan, and a film crew who are making a documentary about PIH. We were met on the tarmac by Loune Viaud, our long-time head of operations and planning and all-around wizard of logistics in Haiti. From there, we drove directly to the Fondation Aristide, where we have about 20 tents pitched in the concrete courtyard, housing PIH staff and volunteer medical teams who have joined us to work in Port-au-Prince. Nobody wants to sleep indoors since the quake.

After we had stashed our belongings in tents, we drove through the city to the Hospital of the National University of Haiti, the main public hospital in Port-au-Prince. Looking out the window on the way to the hospital was like looking at a city that had been systematically carpet bombed. Almost every large building has been flattened or badly broken, with pieces tilted at odd angles like the work of a deranged Frank Gehry.

Amazingly, the streets are also pulsing with life. Markets have sprung up at intersections; tent settlements have sprouted in parks, courtyards and right in the middle of some streets; people industriously sort through the rubble, salvaging intact cinder blocks, crumpled pieces of furniture and equipment, scraps of metal, anything that might be useful in patching together a new home and a new life.

	Volunteers walk by wreckage of nursing school.

The scene at the University Hospital is both nightmarish and inspiring. The buildings have been largely abandoned for fear they might collapse in the next aftershock. Engineers have determined that some of them are structurally sound. But patients and staff are all terrified. Not surprising. The nursing school on the hospital campus collapsed, killing 200 students from the second-year class.

So most patients are housed and most medical procedures are performed in tents pitched throughout the grounds and the surrounding streets.

The pediatric ward at University Hospital.
Waiting to be triaged at the hospital gate.		In one room, two amputations were going on simultaneously.

By the time I arrived, the first wave of emergency surgeries had mostly passed. But operating rooms were still running around the clock. Patients were still arriving at the hospital gates on stretchers, in wheelbarrows, in the arms of family members, and being triaged and admitted for treatment, mostly in tents with banners declaring the country and organization that was working there. PIH had helped get 12 operating rooms up and running at the hospital, including several in one building that had been declared safe.

The next morning a team of about 50 doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and lab technicians from Zanmi Lasante (Partners In Health in Haitian Creole) arrived at Fondation Aristide to map out plans for mobile clinics that would bring medical care to two large tent settlements of people who had lost their homes in the quake. Between them, the two settlements have a population of 50-60,000 people. Calling them tent cities is highly euphemistic. When we arrived, there was hardly a tent to be seen. Most families are living in patchwork shelters cobbled together from tattered sheets of cloth and plastic, scraps of metal and wood, and pieces of cardboard.

Estimated population - over 40,000 people.		A boy in front of his temporary home.

Since the quake they have had no access to health care, little food, and almost no clean water. In open patches of ground within and around the periphery of the settlements, the reeking air and suspiciously squishy soil testify to the total lack of sanitation facilities. Our medical staff fears deadly outbreaks of diarrheal diseases, measles, pneumonia and other diseases.

Yet in the midst of it all children play soccer and fly makeshift kites fashioned from scraps of cloth. Women wash clothes in basins of precious water.

And families work with heartwrenching assiduousness to improve makeshift living spaces that provide almost no shelter from the weather but do afford a scant measure of privacy and domesticity. As I watched one wobbly structure fashioned from threadbare scraps of cloth that looked as if it would blow or melt away with the first storm, a woman emerged with a battered broom to sweep the barren patch of dirt beside her home.

Committees have emerged to organize and advocate for these settlements, exemplifying the spirit of solidarity and community that has enabled the Haitian people to survive and surmount every manner of adversity – from slavery to military occupation, from ruthless dictatorships to apocalyptic hurricanes and floods.

Zanmi Lasante has worked with these committees to find places to set up our clinics and to notify people we would be there to examine and treat patients.

Within 45 minutes of when we arrived on the first day, the team had erected a large open-sided tent, filled most of it with tables and chairs for 20 consulting stations, and established an orderly system for checking patients in and sending them to the next available doctor.

In one corner of the tent, they had set up a pharmacy area and a small laboratory to perform urine, pregnancy and HIV tests.

Within six hours, they saw more than 500 patients -- everybody who had come to the clinic.

And the next day they did it all over again, only bigger and better. At the larger of the two camps, with an estimated population of over 40,000, we had arranged for food to be distributed by the World Food Program and for a water purification system to be installed the day before.

The next day we drove up to PIH's flagship hospital in Cange. The hospital sustained damage, but is fully operational. Wards are overflowing with refugees from Port-au-Prince, many with families who live in the area, others who came simply because they knew there is a hospital in Cange that provides quality care free of charge. In almost every bed, a patient lies with a fracture held together with external metal rods and pins or with heavily bandaged wounds or amputations, usually accompanied by a family member.

A large room that normally serves as a pharmacy warehouse has been converted into a ward for 20 post-operative surgery patients.

The church that I last saw filled to the rafters with parishioners and the soaring sound of the church choir and band is now hushed, with all the seating removed. 50 patients lie on mattresses spread on the floor, with nurses, doctors and family members by their sides or quietly wending their way among the beds and IV poles. The room is uncannily quiet and has acquired an oddly domestic atmosphere. Everybody speaks quietly as parents help injured children wash their faces and brush their teeth, as a teenage girl gently helps her wounded mother use a bedpan and then sits close beside her, arms interwoven, each with a hand resting on the other.

In the evening, the Zanmi Lasante medical team gathered for lengthy discussions about how we can prepare for the next big challenge — how we can approach discharging patients who have no homes or jobs to go back to, who may have lost most of their families, who have injuries that will require months or years of rehabilitation and physical therapy, who will have to cope with paralyzed or missing limbs and other disabilities.

The next morning we observed the discharge of one patient who is fortunate enough to have a home in this area. Zanmi Lasante had already assigned a community health worker who will visit her every day, had already worked out a plan for physical therapy, had already developed plans for psychological support services, had assessed her need for food and other economic assistance.

Before she was released from the hospital, a doctor, physical therapist, and ajan sante (community health agent) went to check out the home where she will be recuperating. With one leg and one arm badly injured, she will need a wheelchair to move around for several months at least. Her home could hardly be called accessible for the handicapped. It can only be reached by clambering up a steep hill on a narrow, dirt path.

Inspecting the home of a patient to be discharged.		Family members await a discharged patient.

But she is one of the lucky ones. She lives in the Zanmi Lasante catchment area, where she will get daily visits from the ajan sante, regular physical therapy appointments, and follow-up wound treatment at the Cange Hospital. That's what we do and have been doing in Cange for almost 25 years. Now we have to figure out how to do it on a massive scale for tens of thousands of people who have fled to the areas where we work. And we also have to help the Haitian Ministry of Health obtain the resources and develop and implement plans to provide similar services in Port-au-Prince and other parts of the country.

We have a lot of work to do. But I feel confident that Zanmi Lasante and PIH can play an important part. And to the extent that I can contribute, I felt extraordinarily fortunate not to be an impotent witness to catastrophe but to be part of an organization that is working with Haitian communities, the Haitian government, and other partners to save lives, to relieve suffering, and to give Haiti a chance to reclaim its place as a beacon of hope and true heir to the banner they wrested from the French with their freedom -- liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Andrew Marx is Director of Communications for Partners In Health.

[published February 2010]

Partners In Health physicians David Walton and Evan Lyon share photos and stories collected in Port-au-Prince during the first few days following the devastating earthquake in Haiti.

Mike Fretto displays one of his t-shirts.

You will want to put more than one of Mike Fretto’s “Help Haiti Rise” t-shirts in your virtual shopping cart (they can be found at www.hellofretto.com). Mike and his father, who co-own Fretto Prints, a screen printing business in St. Augustine, Florida, are donating 100 percent of the proceeds from the sale of these shirts to Partners In Health’s work in Haiti. Not only are the shirts ultra-soft, they are that coveted slim-fit that is all the rage right now.

Mike has long been using the simple tee as a canvass to tell the stories of people in need. After years of working with apparel companies as a freelance graphic designer, he became interested in combining screen printing with social justice. In 2006, Mike began a non-profit called ROSA LOVES. A portion of the proceeds from that organization are used to help support individuals and families in the local community and abroad. For example, money raised from the sale of a shirt called “Simple Machine” helps pay for the commission of recycled bikes that are donated to people in St. Augustine who have limited access to transportation.

Like many people who have read Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains, the book left Mike and his father with a sense of compassion and understanding for the people of Haiti.  Their desire to help only increased after the January 12 earthquake. “We felt confident and compelled to give to PIH,” Mike said.

While the original concept for the “Help Haiti Rise” t-shirts was Mike’s, many people helped to get the project off the ground. A friend donated online storefront space. TSC Apparel and American Apparel offered blank shirts at discounted wholesale prices. Others contributed by posting photos of the shirts online, spreading word of the fundraising drive on Facebook, or simply volunteering their time folding t-shirts.

News about the shirts spread quickly via online social media platforms, particularly the blogosphere. Since then, Mike has spoken on the radio about his initiative and the story has appeared in several local papers. At first Mike was worried that the initial run of 150 shirts would not sell out, but within less than 24 hours after posting them online, the shirts were on backorder. 

“We’ve made approximately $11,000 in sales so far. We’re working towards reaching our goal of $20,000,” he said.

Ultimately, Mike hopes that the shirts will raise awareness about the dire health situation in Haiti following the earthquake.

So, keep shopping. And may your “Help Haiti Rise” tee hopefully one day go out of style.

PIH/ZL's program to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV provides HIV-positive mothers with formula, bottles, and the accessories needed to sanitize the bottles and provide potable water for the formula. The program has helped to bring the mother-to-child transmission rate to less than 2 percent in the Central Plateau of Haiti.

As staff at Partners In Health (PIH) and its sister organization Zanmi Lasante (ZL) begin providing care to Port-au-Prince’s urban population, they are seeing different medical needs than those of the rural populations they’ve primarily worked with throughout the last two decades. Not all of these conditions are earthquake related; some reflect the dearth of adequate medical care for the poorest of the poor living in Port-au-Prince prior to the earthquake. 

Last week, a critically ill 5-year-old child arrived at the PIH medical facility in Port-au-Prince. Although staff there had treated many critically ill children, this boy was different--when examined, he tested positive for both HIV and tuberculosis (TB).

Though it is not rare to find children who are infected with these diseases in Haiti, the U.S. Government estimates 120,000 Haitians are living with HIV, the staff of PIH and ZL were very surprised.

“[We don’t see these cases in our catchment area] at 5 years old!” said Cate Oswald, PIH's Program Manager for Psychosocial Support and Mental Health.

For the past two decades, PIH/ZL and its partners at the Ministry of Health have run comprehensive programs for HIV and TB in the Central Plateau and Artibonite Valley, several hours outside Port-au-Prince. PIH/ZL first began its voluntary HIV/TB counseling and testing program in 1986. In the Central Plateau, where in 1995 PIH/ZL became the first clinic in Haiti to offer antiretroviral drugs free of charge to all HIV-positive women to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, the transmission rate has fallen to less than 2 percent. These programs have made it extremely rare to find young children, like this 5-year-old boy, who have not been previously diagnosed.

The PIH/ZL staff began providing care in Port-au-Prince shortly after the earthquake struck on January 12. In addition, many displaced people are leaving the devastated capital city to seek medical care in PIH’s more established rural catchment areas. This massive reverse urban migration suggests that PIH's HIV and TB programs in the Central Plateau and Artibonite Valley will soon be taking on changing public health needs--including more undiagnosed HIV/TB pediatric cases.

At present, the boy’s condition is still critical. “He's still hanging on, [we] had to give him an immediate blood transfusion and oxygen--he's so weak,” said Cate. PIH/ZL has also put him on both antiretroviral drugs and tuberculosis medications.

PIH physician Evan Lyon sent this message shortly after his return to the U.S. after two weeks providing medical care in Port-au-Prince following the earthquake.

Dr. Evan Lyon with a patient in Port-au-Prince.

It is possible to imagine, even now in these darkest weeks, that something good may come. Many of our patients said out loud to me, sometimes for me to hear but more often just thinking out loud with another human being: “Bondye kite nou kanmpe.” God left us standing. Most still wondered if it would remain true. Would they still die of an injury, or would another aftershock take us all? I had the feeling many people couldn't believe they were still alive. But some went so far as to say: “God left us standing for some reason.”

I think this is the biggest job for all of us that care about Haiti right now: to remain open and committed. In solidarity. With compassion. With tremendous love.

It seems reasonable to me at this point to consider more than 200,000 dead and 1.5 - 2 million homeless and displaced. There is pressure on the infrastructure of the entire nation with so many fleeing the city to live with family in the countryside. Much of Port-au-Prince and Jacmel need to be rebuilt. I understand that Leogane is nearly completely gone. We need to stand with Haiti for a long time to come.

As an individual, I do not know any single faith. But I work from faith just the same. The Christian tradition puts one rule before all others: “Love your neighbor.” I have never worked with the kind of vital, intimate spiritual support I have felt over the past few weeks, beside our brilliant and fierce colleagues.

The Buddhist tradition offers a teaching that's been very close to me while working in Port-au-Prince. “When your heart breaks, it can break open or it can break closed.” I feel very sad for everyone whose heart has broken closed. The pain is serious, crippling. Everyone who has watched the news or has friends or family in Haiti has touched the edge of this pain.  Everyone who has seen the broken bodies and buildings, who has inhaled the dust and stench of dying in and around Port-au-Prince knows this even more intimately. Those of us lucky enough to be alive now may have to carry some of this pain for the rest of our lives.

I know my heart has broken open enough to let me work, to stay upright and moving forward with the hope of helping. When we could not help, which was often, I still felt open to witness, to listen, to offer my presence and kindness.

One evening, about eight days after the earthquake, I stopped at the bedside of an elderly woman who was perhaps in her early 80s. She was scraped and bruised. Her foot had been crushed, but had been well cared for, and she hadn't required surgery. She had a large bandage and was clearly in a lot of pain (the hospital still had very limited pain medications beyond Tylenol and ibuprofen). But at least now she was in a tent and on a bed and receiving care from wonderful nurses and doctors. I held her face and spoke softly. She held mine back and looked at me straight in the eye. She said, “We're alive. We're alive. We're alive.” All I could think to say back was, “I know. We're alive.”

Watch a video of President Bill Clinton discussing PIH's role in earthquake relief and rebuilding efforts in Haiti.

For Charlie Wilder, (aka ChuckWild, aka DJ Captain Planet) supporting Partners In Health is a family affair. A professional DJ since he was 16, Charlie recently made a digital “mixtape” of Haitian music from the 1960s and 70s and offered it as a download from his website in exchange for a minimum $5 donation to PIH. He named it “Music=Medicine,” and as of January 31, sales of the mixtape have already raised $4,300.

Charlie, who has several friends in Haiti, some of whom he still has not heard from since the earthquake, first learned about PIH from his sister. She has spent a great deal of time in Haiti and has a friend who is a long-term patient at PIH's Central Plateau clinic. “One of her best friends would have died if it hadn't been for PIH,” said Charlie. “She took him to the hospital there to be treated for HIV and now he's been staying very healthy and continues to receive medicine regularly.” In addition, a cousin of Charlie’s is volunteering with Socios En Salud, PIH’s sister organization in Peru.

PIH’s overall approach to healthcare was as important to his decision to support PIH as these family ties. “PIH really stands out in their…focus on solidarity,” he explained.

Though he usually gives out his mixtapes for free, he thought tying them to a fundraiser would be an effective way to help Haitian relief efforts while giving people access to some great music. Charlie's efforts have received encouragement and support from the music community. He is even thinking about doing a sequel, possibly featuring contemporary Haitian artists. Now that is music to our ears.

Charlie's mixtape, along with other DJ Captain Planet compilations, can be found on his website: www.mixtaperiot.com.

In the past two years, Haiti has faced several crises--from four consecutive hurricanes and tropical storms last year to sharp food and fuel price increases and a downturn in the global economy. During all of this, the international community required Haiti--already teh poorest country in the western hemisphere--to continue paying off a debilitating debt, leaving it stretched far too thin to support the basic economic and social needs of its population. In the light of the recent earthquake, the worst Haiti has experience in at least 200 years, Haiti's economic and social burdents have grown substantially.

Should the international community expect Haiti to continue the same debt payments too?

Thankfully, Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) believe the answer is "No."

Last week, the senators introduced legislation focused on bringing Haiti debt relief in order to speed recovery efforts following the January 12th earthquake. This legislation would instruct the U.S. Treasury to direct representatives to each international financial institution (IFI) to advocate for the cancellation of all of Haiti’s remaining debt obligations, including any additional debt incurred in the recovery. In addition, the legislation would ensure relief for any remaining debt service payments, as well as encourage IFIs to provide future assistance to Haiti in the form of grants, as opposed to loans.

Haiti has long been over-burdened by international debt. Just after Haiti’s birth as an independent nation in the early 1800s, France anchored its warships offshore and demanded 150 million francs ($21 billion in current dollars) to compensate for the loss of its slave colony (the newly independant Haitians). Those debt repayments, required to ensure Haiti’s freedom, took 122 years to pay back.  In the late half of the 20th century, the Duvalier dictatorship plunged the country further into debt. In an effort to rebuild the nation after decades of dictatorship, Haiti accepted several loans from IFIs, amassing even more debt. In line with the IFI promoted policies at the time, these loans also came with a strict set of conditions, including requirements to privatize state-owned enterprises, cut spending on social services and liberalize trade policies.

In the last few years, the U.S. government has asked theTreasury Department to help fast-track the cancellation of Haiti’s debts to various IFIs. In 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged $20 million, which was intended to cover Haiti’s remaining debt payments to the World Bank and Inter American Development Bank. On June 30 of last year, Haiti reached the “completion point” in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) program, making them eligible for further debt relief.

As of today, $1.2 billion in debt has been cancelled, though this only accounts for all debts acquired before 2004. Another $1.05 billion remains; this represents debt acquired in the last five years, mainly to multi-lateral banks. In the next decade, Haiti is projected to pay more that $100 million in debt payments to the IMF and IDB. This money would be better spent on Haiti's own recovery efforts.

PIH believes that it is unethical to allow Haiti to fall deeper into debt as it recovers from the horrific events of the last month.  The international community’s effort to aid Haiti should not also handcuff its citizens with debt that will take decades to pay off. The international community's response must come in the form of  grants without harmful conditions, not loans. We have seen policies put in place that would hamper Haiti’s long-term recovery. The IMF responded to the earthquake by announcing an offer to loan Haiti $102 million.

Though the decisions both to offer aid through loans and to not cancel Haiti’s outstanding debt has sparked criticism.  The IMF stated that it cannot provide grants. Instead, the loan offered to Haiti would be interest-free until 2011.

More work needs to be done to convince creditors to free Haiti of its debt burden and invest in the future of Haiti's citizens.  The United States should use its influence to ensure the immediate and complete cancellation of Haiti’s debts.  The efforts by Senators Dodd and Lugar are a step in the right direction.

Sign a ONE campaign petition to cancel Haiti's debt.

Neg Mawon Statue with the crumbled palace in the background.

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. As she recalls the smell of decomposing bodies in the street and dust from the rubble that choked her breath and stung her eyes, it is clear she has seen horrors that she will not soon forget. It is even clearer, however, that the image burnt most powerfully in her memory is one of hope.

After her first day—a day during which she, along with PIH physician David Walton and a team from Medicines Sans Frontiers Belgium, treated over 800 people—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. At the time of the revolution, 70 percent of the slaves had been born free men and women in Africa. 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.

Back in the United States, Joia is frequently asked about how Haiti can rebuild in the face of this tragedy. Her response is an optimistic one. “Haiti’s strength is her people,” she says with confidence. Insisting that if foreign aid can invest in the public sector--particularly health and education-- and communities are actively engaged in the process, Haiti can be built back better. The woman in front of the statue is not far from Joia’s thoughts as she says “The indomitable spirit of the Haitian people is Haiti’s greatest resource, and it is a spirit that is present in abundance.” Neg Mawon, the free man, will always stand for Haiti. We will always stand with Haiti.

PIH Physician Evan Lyon recently returned from two weeks helping with earthquake relief efforts in Port-au-Prince. In his post below, he reflects on the achievements—and challenges—of the past two weeks at HUEH.

Dr. Evan Lyon (right) in Port-au-Prince.

My work at the general hospital in Port-au-Prince (HUEH) my communications with Zanmi Lasante colleagues nationwide in Haiti has been very sobering.  I am returning to my family today with a very heavy heart and concern that's aching from my marrow or someplace just as deep.  Smells and dust linger on my body despite a warm shower and fair sleep in a clean airport hotel.  

Medicine and healthcare will play an important role in helping Haiti survive now,  especially the kind of durable, committed, accessible, and respectful care Zanmi Lasante provides.  I find my worries, however, lingering more, much more, basic human needs: shelter, water, food, sanitation, and compassion.

The extraordinary Haitian leadership at the general hospital and the generous volunteers from around the world have made a functioning general hospital again within two weeks of the earthquake.  We helped many.  We lost many.  There are emergency and routine medical services running and improving daily. The Haitian Red Cross has been operating again for four or five days now.  Blood is available for many of the most injured.  A central warehouse --poorly supplied at the time of the quake, with what little stocks to be had shaken to the ground--is organized and supplying surgical, medical, pediatric, obstetric, and rehabilitation services.  The general hospital still in need of some supplies, much of it vital--oxygen, sterilization equipment for the operating rooms, tents and beds.  But HUEH is a working hospital again, receiving patients, caring for most, and facilitating transfer when it can't meet their needs.  The degree of collaboration on the university campus has been inspiring.

If I'm not mistaken, there were about 100 inpatients at HUEH at the time of the quake.  The hospital now has 500 staffed beds, mostly in tents, as most building space is either destroyed or unsafe.

One of the most heartening things I saw during my two weeks at HUEH was one evening ten days or so after the largest earthquake.  As I was walking from deep inside the campus, I saw two people walking toward me carrying small bundles cradled before them.  They were walking quickly and with purpose but also calmly.  I slowed and stood aside so they could pass.  Deep in each bundle, I saw a newborn baby.  Both had their eyes closed and looked healthy.   I knew somehow they were OK.  They were also on their way to the pediatric department, now a tent in front of the former pediatric building, which was destroyed.  At the gate, they must have asked who could check on their babies.  Someone welcomed them and showed the way to pediatrics.  These children very likely didn't need a nurse or doctor to check them out, but they certainly deserved one.  Life continues even in the shadow of such sadness and death.

Dear Friends,

Last week, it was my privilege to testify before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations at their hearing on "Haiti: from Rescue to Recovery and Reconstruction."

I opened my testimony thus: "Today, my hope is to do justice to Haiti not by chronicling the events of the past two weeks, which are well known to you, but by attesting to the possibility of hope for the country, and of the importance of meaningful investment and sustainable development in Haiti. That said, I will not pretend that hope is not at times difficult to muster."

In my role as the UN Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti, as well as from my long-standing homes at Partners In Health and at Harvard, I have witnessed the many varieties of privation endured by Haiti as well as the country's extraordinary resilience. But in more than twenty-five years of working there, I have never seen devastation or suffering on this scale. The response from our community has been equally immense: acts of great courage within Haiti, and of great generosity beyond it.

I know that Haiti can and will recover. I believe that there is an opportunity to build Haiti back better. I am convinced that it will require a massive and ongoing commitment on all of our parts, and that the road will be a long one. We are fortunate to have many partners in this effort, in addition to the five thousand employees of Zanmi Lasante: my colleagues now joining them in Haiti, many of whom have been sharing updates with us and with you; the extraordinary team in Boston; the legions of PIH supporters, old and new, as well as our organizational partners and our colleagues at the Clinton Foundation and the UN. Together, we are all working to serve the people of Haiti, especially those marginalized by chronic poverty as well as the acute insult (to use medical terms) of January 12.

Please join us. 

In gratitude,

Paul Farmer (PIH co-founder)

To read the rest of Paul's Senate testimony, click here.

Some of the treats sold at the bake sale in Berkeley, CA.

We've been incredibly touched and inspired by the outpouring of support we've received in the past few weeks. From celebrities to sports teams to activists--we are so thankful to all our partners in health. Below is the story of how one woman brought a community of volunteers to stand in solidarity with PIH, and with the people of Haiti.

 When she heard about the earthquake that devastated Haiti’s capital, Samin Nosrat was immediately compelled to respond in the best way she could.  A chef, writer, and teacher living in Berkeley, California, Samin used what she describes as her two greatest talents to help: cooking and bringing people together.  She had learned about PIH from a friend, and knew that we would need the help of people like her in order to provide desperately needed food, water and medical supplies the people of Port au Prince. She said, “When the earthquake struck, I knew that [PIH] would be doing invaluable work there and would need our support”

With the help of her own network of restaurant owners, chefs, and graphic designers, Samin organized bake sales at three locations throughout the Bay Area, and invited over 1,000 people via facebook and twitter.  The local press also promoted the event, featuring it in the SF Bay Area weekend guide, on blogs and on the radio.

As interest in the event grew, Samin received scores of offers of support.  A local knitting group decided to knit scarves and hats to sell, while others provided pickles, jams, chocolates, candies and loaves of artisan breads. Employees at one of the restaurants hosting the bake sale raised $5,000 themselves, and the founder of Ansura yoga, which Samin practices, offered to match another $5,000 in donations.  In all, about 100 volunteers contributed time, skills and financial resources to making sure all three sales were organized and stocked with gourmet treats.

Despite rain on the day of the bake sale, Samin estimates that over 1,000 people came out to offer their support to Haiti, and raised more than $22,000.  According to Samin, who said that the atmosphere was “warm, generous and spirited” the event was also very meaningful to the people who contributed.  “This was a wonderful opportunity for us to share [our work with everyone]”.  PIH thanks Samin—and everyone who contributed—for sharing with us.

Generation NXT emergency event

We've been incredibly touched and inspired by the outpouring of support we've received in the past few weeks. From celebrities to sports teams to activists--we are so thankful to all our partners in health. Below is how some of our hippest supporters are standing in solidarity with PIH, and with the people of Haiti.

Months of careful planning over late night sushi usually precede Generation NXT’s fundraising events. But when this New York City-based non-profit heard about the disaster in Haiti, they knew that they had to act fast.

“We arranged an “emergency event” because that’s exactly what the situation is,” said Louis Levy, Chairman of Generation NXT. Members are a mix of young men and women consisting of entrepreneurs, doctors, full-time students, teachers, and artists, ranging in age from about 18 to 35. United by a common desire to combine philanthropy and fun, Generation NXT raises awareness for different types of causes by hosting charity events at various New York City hot-spots. Their eleventh-hour Haiti fundraiser proved to be a hit among the hip and humanitarian.

Generation NXT was fortunate to secure Amnesia—a donated venue that made for an unforgettable evening showcasing various forms of entertainment, from music to dancers to acrobats who performed while suspended in mid-air above the crowd. Award-winning DJ Peter Paul, DJ Phresh, and DJ Hex Hector spun hip-hop that kept the crowd dancing until midnight the next day. It was only Generation NXT’s third fundraiser, but it raised over $25,000, which the organization donated to Partners In Health’s work in Haiti.

How did such a young organization become fundraising veterans virtually overnight?

Once Generation NXT secured the donated space, they calculated the maximum number of people it could hold—over 1,000. That’s when they got down to work. Members pooled their networking capabilities and sent out invitations. “We reached out to different types of sponsors and entertainers that were willing to donate products, time, and talent for the cause,” said Louis.

The response was overwhelming. “Everyone was eager to participate given the impact that the earthquake in Haiti had on the world,” Louis said.

Learn more about Generation NXT.

Since the earthquake, the ONEXONE Foundation has been an instrumental partner of Partners In Health in responding to those in need in Haiti. On January 16, in collaboration with a consortium of Canadian businesses, ONEXONE sent a shipment of much-needed provisions from Montreal to Haiti via a dedicated Air Canada relief flight.  The cargo included medical supplies: dressings, needles, IVs, IV solution, boxes of syringes, bottles of antimicrobial product, as well as blankets, tents, sleeping bags, flashlights, batteries, and water.

“ONEXONE has ensured much care and attention has been placed on making sure that this first shipment will bring supplies necessary as identified by on-the-ground relief agency, Partners In Health. Through this affiliation we know that these critical supplies are both needed and distributable,” said Joelle Adler, Founder of ONEXONE.

Through ONEXONE’s coordination, Air Canada generously donated the cargo space to transport these supplies to Haiti and the Rogers Family and Rogers Communications donated $250,000 to be distributed in funds and goods.

In addition, Rogers Wireless and Fido are encouraging their customers to assist ONEXONE in helping those in Haiti by donating via text message to Partners In Health: Haiti and other Haitian Relief Organizations.

"ONEXONE has been a terrific partner to PIH in our response to this crisis in Haiti.  They were one of the fastest organizations to mobilize valuable medical supplies and actually get a plane-load of supplies landed at Port-au-Prince airport, in partnership with Air Canada,” stated Susan Sayers, Director of Institutional Development at Partners In Health. “We just told them what we needed, and through their persistence and determination, they made it happen."

ONEXONE has been helping children since 2005, focusing on the 5 sectors they believe create the totality of a child’s overall well-being: water, hunger, healthcare, education, and play.  With this mission, ONEXONE works in close partnership with carefully selected local organizations to implement programs and initiatives that achieve the ultimate goal of alleviating suffering and saving lives.