Healing & Hope

Has it really only been five months?

Sometimes that reality does, indeed, seem unreal.  The days begin to run into one another.  Early morning risings; preparing the mobile clinic for operation in the tent camp of the day; providing care and treatment to yet another day’s worth of hundreds of sick, malnourished and wounded;  day’s end arrives and we break down the mobile clinic in preparation for tomorrow’s re-location to another of Bon Repos or Port au Prince’s numerous tent camps.

Haiti’s quake-induced struggles and challenges have lost their prominence in the headlines of the international media.  The prominence is not lost with HCS, however.

Looking into the worried eyes of a desperate mother whose child is weak and lethargic from chronic diarrhea, horrid scabies, malnutrition, uncontrolled fungus, pneumonia or any of the other countless conditions that are running rampant within these tent camps, is the fuel that spurs us to action, even at our most fatigued.  Knowing that we are the ones that provide otherwise non-existent care for many residents of these camps–that are all but forgotten–is the day-to-day reality of Haiti Community Support, and you, our supporters.

Yes, it has, indeed, been only five months.

In these five months we have risen to the challenge to expand  our operations, address unmet needs, save countless lives, and have empowered Haitians to help themselves, their neighbors, and, ultimately, their country.  This would not be possible without your support

With HCS’s presence in the quake zone being established by day three, post quake, it has afforded us an opportunity to observe the many organizations that initially arrived, en mass, to provide assistance to Haiti.  Huge NGO’s arrived, initially, on a large scale.  It has been heart-warming to witness the out-pouring of help and concern from temporary volunteers and organizations.  They have performed admirably in their areas of expertise.

Haiti Community Support’s area of expertise is people.  That’s what our focus has been for our seven years of operation in Haiti.  Our long-term status is what sets us apart from the rest.  We have watched as many have come, and now many have gone.  Unlike these others, our efforts are seamless due to our familiarity, our knowledge, and our connection with Haiti.  We were there before the quake, and we remain.  Permanence is what is now needed.  Long-term presence and support is the strong foundation that will provide Haiti permanent improvement.  HCS remains in place—helping Haitians help Haiti.

HOPE FROM WITHIN

HCS is now seeing the departure of the last remaining US troops from Haiti.  Temporary volunteers and foreign NGO’s that provided sorely needed help and support in the aftermath of the quake, have returned to their lives.   As many depart, HCS remains, carving out a permanent niche of care and support in the midst of one of the most horrific disasters ever known.  With this exodus of other volunteers and NGO’s, providing health care and assistance to these camps of displaced persons takes on a new urgency.  Floods are occurring, camp conditions are squalid, at best, and we are now officially within Hurricane Season.

It has become evident that the need for mobile medical services will remain for a long time.  Rebuilding efforts are going to be painfully slow.  Hundreds of thousands of Haitians will continue to be homeless; continue to reside in these camps; and continue to suffer.  HCS has planned for the long-term.

The HCS Mobile Clinic will continue to operate as long as there are camps of countless displaced quake victims.

Five Months=BIG Accomplishments!

HCS-Port Au Prince FREE HEALTH CARE CENTER!

In addition to the Mobile Clinic, HCS has recently negotiated terms on a compound within Port Au Prince to establish a permanent medical clinic, as well.  Beginning this month (June, 2010) HCS will move into this well-built building.  This quality construction, quake-safe, walled compound is the perfect setting for Haiti Community Support to establish a much needed, permanent health clinic serving the poorest of the poor.  This new facility will accommodate:

·        HCS administrative offices,

·        Examination and treatment rooms,

·        Recovery rooms and

·        Maternity facilities.

HCS fundraising initiatives have grown to include obtaining the necessary equipment and supplies for this new, permanent,  HCS-Port au Prince Free Health Care Center!

Haitians for Haiti

It can be intimidating to see the thousands of post-quake volunteers departing Haiti.  It forces a pause in our perceptions.  Haiti, as we know, is rich in culture.  Rich in beauty.  Rich in strength, character and an innate ability to withstand the harshest of conditions, while continuing to forge ahead.  These inconceivable attributes are the tools that HCS utilizes to help Haitians help Haiti.

We differ in our approach as a Haiti based NGO.  There is no great import of staff (volunteer or permanent) in the structure of Haiti Community Support.  HCS clinics, schools and programs are staffed by the treasures of Haiti—well trained Haitian Doctors, Nurses, teachers and support-staff.  These treasures are what gives HCS the ability to operate in conditions and areas that are untouched by other agencies and organizations.  We speak the language.  We know the Culture.  We have full knowledge of the lay of the land.  We ARE Haiti.  Who better to help Haiti than Haitians?  Who better to make a positive, permanent difference in the lives of Haitians, and the progress of Haiti, than Haitians, themselves?

Haiti Community Support understands this.  Empowerment is an incredible force.  It can, and does, move proverbial mountains.  We each have the ability to assist these beautiful people in their efforts to make a difference in their own lives, in their living conditions, in the lives of their children, and in their Country.

Jumping! Report from Haiti’s HCS Clinics

Hunger and Hope –  Disease and Determination

Working in the mountains these last seven years has prepared us for what our clinics are finding today in the camps in Port au Prince.  Life in the “tent” camps where we site our clinics is horrid and getting worse.  Last week we held public clinics in  the city and in the mountains.  Given the magnitude of population in peril HCS is expanding our clinic care in both areas.

Jumping between our clinic in Port au Prince, and then up to the mountains for a big Saturday clinic in Au Centre this week, MD Rex Parsons from Oregon had an opportunity to see first -hand the scope of the work ahead:  ”The health conditions in the mountains are simply horrific.  There’s no other word for it.  The whole day we treated people with an unbelievable burden of chronic illness…”  Dr Parsons is returning home to Oregon to continue helping HCS to build our medical capacity in Haiti.  His biggest impression:  “the unspeakable courage of these people”

We are getting a lot done because we’re keeping our focus – we are maintaining our level of clinical services in Port au Prince while expanding existing support for villages in Au Centre/Beaumont region of the Southern mountains.  It is hard to maintain focus in the midst of a natural/social debacle of this scope, but we persevere!

Dreams & Reality

In The Midst of Haiti’s Second Humanitarian Disaster, Haiti Community Support Running Mobile Medical Clinics in the Camps

Sak Pase? (How’s it going?)

Reality:

Haiti Community Support’s mobile clinic in Port au Prince continues delivering primary health care to 1000 patients each week.  Two or three times each week we’re now setting up the clinic in the displaced person camp at Village Terramene, Lilavois, La Plaine, which is not far from our primary clinic site in Bon Repos, a few miles from the airport..Conditions in the Terramene camp are like they were in the Bon Repos camp 6 weeks ago.   This camp is a pocket of humanity totally lost to the relief effort.  No food is getting to these families, not one tent amongst hundreds of families. While there a leader from another camp begged us to come help them out too. And so it goes.

Our first day there an emaciated woman was carried to us – a block fell on her foot in the quake.  The partial foot amputation done after the quake never had follow-up treatment.  She’d been wasting away starving under a bed sheet almost three months since.

Hunger is everywhere.  No one has a tent, only bed sheets held up with sticks.

On the streets – vendors sell 5 -6 foot sticks to hold up bedspreads.   We are dumbfounded by the lack of adequate response to this situation.  No tents?  No medical clinics?

Our clinic is composed of tents.  Usually two service lines are in operation.  We have chairs and tables, a shelving unit for medications.  Patients form a line, a staff member gives out numbers, records names, while doing so finding the severe cases that are brought to the front of the line.  Clinic staff are cross trained, most can handle the triage line, translations for visiting doctors, camp set up, medication, dispensing.

The clinic operates with a minimum of one doctor and one trained nurse.  They, and the rest of the HCS staff, work long hot hours, and have tremendous stamina.  A mobile clinic is humble in structure, but a miracle in delivery of care.  We’re seeing hundreds of sick and suffering people each day, week after week.

We are treating infants and children and women mostly.  Most of the patients have now been living outdoors for almost 3 months. The clinic is open for all, no money is charged for medicine or consultation.  Most of our patients were poor before the quake, and now have nothing.   The rains are starting up, some nights see showers lasting an hour, entire belongings wet within minutes.  Fungal diseases, flu, pneumonia, severe diahrea and malaria are common diagnoses.  Some infants have scabies fungual sores over 90% of their bodies.  One mother of 2 living under a bedspread was starving, her amputated foot had received no follow-up care since the quake.  She was going into shock.

In the Lilavois camp we see no sign of food aid, many people are clearly starving.  We are hardly 5 miles from the airport.  From our clinics we can see the convoys of aid trucks, filled with food and shelters driving into Port au Prince from the Dominican Republic.  But none stop here.  Sometimes you pause and wonder…”how is it that only we are here?  Where are the others?”  Where are their medic tents and the doctors?  Why don’t we see anyone distributing tarps or tents, some kind of temporary relief to all of these people!?

Dreams Coming True: One large fabricator of modular emergency buildings is working with us on fund raising for a multiple-unit clinic.  The whole building would fit in three 40′ containers. The La Plaine area we are in is undergoing tremendous expansion as the land is flat and it is near the city center.  The area is previously un-served by any community medical center.  Having a permanent facility in Port au Prince will also serve us as a staging area for our existing clinic and school in the mountains and storage for water project piping, and a central pharmacy.  This will also give us an actual administrative office in PaP

Calamity in the Countryside

Report  from Haiti’s Countryside

Hunger and Hope –  Disease and Determination

So many of you have been asking for news from the Southern mountain villages of Au Centre/Beaumont where Haiti Community Support (HCS) programs been backing up the Renaissance Elementary School, hot lunch programs, and village clinic.  HCS Director Mathilde Wilson managed to spend time in the village recently.

The quake was felt strongly in the village.  People report being thrown to the ground by the tremor.  Happily, the HCS-supported new schoolhouse suffered no damage from the earthquake.  Classes have now resumed, the hot lunch program is back in full swing.

Yet the effects of the quake on these villages have been profound and severe, showing how interconnected are the country and the capital.   Country people have lost many relatives to the quake;  family members who sent remittances to poorer relatives in the country, parents, gone to the city for a better chance.  Since the quake many people have returned home to the country in search of a roof, housing, and some food.  The country, already in a food crisis, has gone deeper into nutritional debt.  Dr. Gene McColgin who recently returned from HCS clinics in Au Centre/Beaumont ,   reports an alarming number of severely undernourished children “I’m seeing red hair everywhere.” He said.   Food insecurity brings its own epidemics; around 50% of adults over age 45 coming to the clinic “have pathological high blood pressure or severe diabetes”,  the doctor reported.

In light of the severe situation in the villages, HCS met with two neighboring village groups working out the details for HCS to support them in hand building a road between the villages.  Starting next week HCS is supplying the daily wages, and a hot meal to up to 100 day laborers, hand building the road.  Each worker will also receive, at the end of each week, a sack of rice, and cooking oil and beans.  In this way cash and food reach our villages, while the community comes together to build a life changing road..

After a week of village meetings, arranging future clinic dates, meetings with school employees,  and of course, time with her mom and family in Au Centre, Mathilde headed back down the mountain in a torrent of rain just minutes ahead of streams overflowing the roads.

Asked what changes  she saw in the Haitians she visited in the country, compared to last August’s visit, Mathilde replied:

“There’s a sense of communal solidarity, people seem to be working together more than before, looking to solve problems.  The quake has had a terrible effect even in our far-remote villages.  The capital destroyed, the palace in ruins!  Port au Prince is the head to Haiti’s body.  Villagers want to be involved in saving their nation.”

The trip to the country helped HCS clarify our course for the immediate future:

• Help keep the school and hot lunch program running, help restore normalcy to the children.
• Strengthen Au Centre’s community clinic with more doctor visits.  And begin building clinic capacity in Beaumont.   Support  targeted  food and housing aid to 30 new most-at-risk families.
• Keep backing public works infrastructure projects to get cash and food into the villages.  Next up:  supporting a major water project to bring water 2KM by pipe to the villages.
• We are seeking one, or multiple supports for a comprehensive development program targeting Haiti’s Southern Mountain communities including:

National Park Reforestation
Shade-Grown Coffee – Improve yield and quality. Develop marketing partners.
Food crop improvements
Eco-Tourism Development

We’re glad to say that physically Au Centre/Beaumont are about the same before the quake.  But sadly these rural villages, before the quake labeled an area of “Extreme Food Insecurity,” now has added burdens.  HCS is there and we’re doing our best to lend support.

Haiti Community Support delivering Medical Care in Port au Prince.

Begun under a mango tree in the Bon Repos park, a Port au Prince neighborhood, since day two the clinic began with two bags of medicine, and a neighborhood of helpers.   Chairs from the priest, exam table from a wrecked store, a blue tarp borrowed from family, park space from the landowner, a family vehicle, crowd control by the citizens group of the adjacent refugee camp.   From the very beginnings, our clinic has offered free medical care to the wounded and the sick.  In Port au Prince our growing staff of Haitian doctors, nurses, translators, drivers and security keep the humblest of clinics open 5 days a week.

We’re proud to report that our clinic organization has provided a place for an incredible group of visiting doctors, nurses and EMTs to work alongside the full time Haitian staff.  Recently a group of dedicated 6 Cuban doctors joined our clinic making it possible for us to treat over 250 patients some days, in 3 service lines.

We’ve supplied ourselves with medicine  through purchases in Santo Domingo made possible by our donors, and also to the generosity of our visiting doctors and EMTs bringing huge quantities of supplies.

The lines of sick people keep growing.  While improving our mobile field clinic with improved tents, and supplies, we are now looking to the future, to create a permanent clinic in this unserved neighborhood.  We’re awaiting shipment of a donated ambulance, and a container of supplies.  We’re now looking to partners stateside to help us with needed supplies of building materials, clinic equipment, and always, medications.

Our experience running village clinics in the rural mountains, have prepared us for the challenges of this type of medicine.  The multiple stresses of loss of jobs and family, of homes gone or unsafe, of hunger and exposure are showing themselves in the sick bodies of her citizens.  Haiti will survive, but how many more must die as the world turns to other interests?

Haiti Community Support is resolute -

• We will maintain our treatment clinics in the capital and in the countryside.  We will not charge for consultations or medicine.  Haitians at both are hungry and hurting.  Our patients have no one else to turn to.
• We’ll keep the school open, and the food programs increasing.
• We’ll continue coming to you, our supporters.  If you can help us, we can help in Haiti.

You Have Touched Our Hearts

You have touched our hearts these last weeks.

You may not know it, but your recent support of Haiti Community Support has already built a vibrant, caring medical clinic in the midst of the most anguished scene on earth.

By believing in what Haitians can accomplish, I thank you for being a partner, not a patron; for being a neighbor, not an outsider. You’ve made it possible for us to build a facility that is delivering immense comfort to a shocked and traumatized people.

We’re still treating the blunt trauma, and deep cuts from the quake. But it is now the overwhelming sickness of all varieties that plague us. Emaciated newborns, horrendous fungal infections, migraines and panic attacks, skyrocketing blood pressure, these are some of the challenges that inhabit the lives of Haiti’s survivors.

Thank you for sharing our belief that it is Haitians who can build their society.

Many days before we saw the first US military or Red Cross assessment teams in our neighborhood, we had already been delivering life-saving help to hundreds. We were already supporting a 20 person team of Haitian doctors and nurses , community leaders, and porters, cooks, and security that formed effortlessly to support the clinic.

Few would believe reading the press coverage of Haiti that the greatest resources for quake relief are the Haitians themselves. We find them everywhere; forming community committees, chipping in with good will and help, sharing with neighbors. It is this power we tap into, and with this power we are able to get so much accomplished.

You will read a lot about Haiti in the coming months. I’m sorry to tell you that the immensity of the tragedy is likely to bring harrowing images to your news screens for some time to come.

Many of you know that we have been doing rural development projects in the remote regions of the Southern mountains. Our villages of Au Centre/ Beaumont didn’t suffer directly from the quake.

But, right now, today, these villages are confronted with a population explosion of sick and injured, and homeless from Port au Prince. Many come home already burdened with TB/AIDs or other diseases contacted in the slums.

Even in the best of times, our rural region suffers from extreme food insecurity. Reports coming to us from our villages indicate the population has ballooned more than 300% in the last week.

Considering that the big food operations in Port au Prince are only now distributing their first bags of food, how on earth can we expect to see a timely deployment of emergency food to the scattered rural populations? The scale is huge, the response far too slow.

For this reason, small direct-action groups like ours have an important role to play on the ground in Haiti. It is imperative that we build our logistics and capacity, expand our Bon Repos clinic in Port au Prince, and move to greatly increase clinic capacity in Au Centre/Beaumont.

Please, can you continue supporting our sustained efforts to lift Haiti, by tapping into the power of the world’s strongest people – the Haitians.

With love for life,

Mathilde and Bruce Wilson

Directors

Haiti Community Support

PS: Can you please:

· Forward this email to your lists of friends. With your endorsement, you will help us bring more support.

· Can you please consider continuing your financial support by visiting our secure donation option at our web page www.haitisupport.org/donate

· Please join us at our big fundraiser on February 21, 2010, at Mt Victory Camp, St Croix US Virgin Islands. Multiple bands, camp roasted Caribbean food!

Mathilde in Port au Prince

Haiti Community Support, Co-Director Mathilde Aurelien-Wilson arrived in Port au Prince on January 14th.  Three days after the quake, with the Port au Prince airport closed, she flew  to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic .  On the way overland into Haiti, she survived a near fatal bus collision.

Since arrival in Port au Prince, Mathilde has recruited 25 survivors to staff and run a neighborhood medical station.  Many of the staff themselves are wounded: doctors and nurses, security and logistics, cooks and drivers, porters.  Some staff assigned to simply hold hands to comfort the sick and the shattered.

The medical station of Bon Repos, isn’t much lo look at.   Each morning the clinic is set up in the park under a shade tree.  Each day neighbors bring out two kitchen tables for exams, some poles hold up some old plastic to make walls for privacy.  Sometimes there are three patients being treated at once,

At the end of the day it is all taken down.

HCS Medical Leader for Bon Repos is First Responder Peter Dybing  who has coordinated and administered care to hundreds of untreated people.  He has been tireless, and heroic.  He told me that the thing he just can’t understand is where are the other medics.  Why are these wounds now threatening lives! Headed for  amputation just for lack of medics.

Mathilde and her team have been sharing the life of their patients and of her family members.  They sleep each night on the ground,  no tent, no roof of any kind.   I asked her what those nights are like.  She paused a long time and she told me that in each night, as she sits amongst her family with 40 neighbors huddled together under the sky, she said she there are times where she’s felt a peace unlike anything she ever felt before. She finished saying,     “I know am in the right place”.

I asked her what the world should know about Haiti tonight. Here’s what she had to say:

“Please tell the world that we Haitians are peaceful, we won’t hurt you, please don’t be afraid of us!  Come out of your compound link fences, open your gates and help us, Stop brandishing your guns,  Don’t send me to USAID where I’m told to wait in a line.  We’re helping our own people here!  Why should I wait in your line?  Why are you hiding behind your barb wire and your paperwork?  Give us some supplies, a tent!”

Before we ended our call I asked her what would she say to President Obama tonight and she said:

“Mr. President tonight I sleep with my people under the cold sky.  Please!  Listen to a million voices of suffering.  Come down here and run this operation or another 150,000 could die.  Please, Mr President, may I please have some gauze bandages.  We’ve run out of suture kits.

Tomorrow Mathilde will drive back over the mountain to Port au Prince, loaded with tarps and tents, water purification tablets, and, yes, boxes of those gauze pads.  I am terrified for her, and the safety of her team.

Please will you help us once again:

Email our updates to your friends.  Ask them to help us.

Please donate on-line .  Help us keep the clinic going.  Help us direct more medical help immediately direct to the streets and the hospitals..
Below you will find daily updates.  Please feel free to let us know of any suggestions, questions, or should we be able to provide you with additional information.

With gratitude,

Bruce & Mathilde Wilson
Haiti Community Support, Inc.
(340) 772-1651
haitisupport@gmail.com
www.haitisupport.org