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Addressing the Need in Cherident
Although the need in Cherident is great, the people can be helped with a few basics, including improved healthcare. Kids are kids all across the world. Help these wonderful children and their families get the healthcare they need! They are the future of Haiti.
This little girl's blonde hair is an obvious sign of malnutrition. Their thin frames speak volumes. They need and deserve our help!
The Healthcare Gap
Throughout Haiti, the mortality of children aged 0 to 5 has increased by 10% from 1996 to 2000, mainly due to increased poverty and a breakdown of infrastructure. Levels of disease and even causes of death are poorly documented, but some statistics were gathered in 2000 by PAHO.
Leading causes of death and disease in children are acute diarrhea, malnutrition, and acute respiratory infections. Typhoid fever is endemic throughout Haiti, and epidemics of meningococcal meningitis occur frequently as well. In 2000, 70% of young children were severely malnourished.
In 2000, diseases among adolescents and adults included a high prevalence of AIDS, high levels of tuberculosis—associated both with AIDS and with poverty— and many deaths from infectious diarrhea and from stroke. Among women, death from childbirth was the fourth leading cause of death, increased 15% from 1995. Death was due to poor nutrition, poor care, and too closely spaced children. The most common cancer causing death was cervical cancer, preventable and rare in the U.S.
More recently, visiting teams of health care professionals in Cherident reported very high levels of anemia in children due to hookworm. They also found high rates of severe hypertension, and an unusual number of young adults with heart murmurs. They expected high rates of tuberculosis and AIDS, but they were unable to assess for these conditions.
Much of this disease burden is preventable with basic health education and health care.
The Future
HHP continues to expand our services to best serve the needs of Cherident and the Grande Colline region.
Training more Community Health Workers (CHWs) will enable the clinic to reach out to the surrounding communities, as well as to provide vital health education to people who would otherwise be missed. Simple interventions such as encouraging breast feeding of infants and teaching mothers how to make a solution of sugar and salt for diarrhea can save many lives. For example, according to Dr. Paul Farmer’s group, Partners in Health (PIH, www.pih.org), teaching mothers how to take care of a newborn baby’s cord has reduced the incidence of neonatal tetanus by 90% in areas where CHWs are working.
Another task is to repair and refurbish the guesthouse in order to have visiting medical teams provide consultation and training for the Haitian staff. Later, we hope to be able to provide dental care and education about simple dental hygiene practices taken for granted in the U.S. Eventually, the clinic can be expanded to provide space for overnight patient stays and simple operative procedures.
Obviously, all of this will take more money than a few churches can generate. We plan to expand fundraising activities but also to apply for government and private agency grants.
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