- The meeting was not what I had anticipated it to be
- It appears that schools are the primary point of contact/interaction for the Catholic Church in Haiti, and the most effective means of medical assistance in the schools is in the role of educator – sanitation techniques, water treatment methods, disease prevention, etc
- Many of the meeting attendees are doctors, dentists, and nurse/practitioners.
- In my opinion, it would be a poor use to their talents to spend their volunteer time in such educational roles
- This is NOT to say that the educational based mission should not be considered, just that others should consider pursuing this particular mission
- One of the comments made towards the end of the meeting was “Go to Haiti with your education mission, come back, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your program, restructure and return. As you continue to visit you will begin to realize what the needs are and go from there”.
- Most hospitals, clinics, etc. are state run/supervised (is this true?) and any interaction with them would require working with the government – not the Catholic Church – unless . . .
- Are there any Catholic Hospitals in Haiti?
I have visited our parish in Haiti only once (thus far). In this rural parish (St. Elizabeth de Perodin), most of the basic medical needs of the people are served by a clinic which is run by the French-based InterAide. Primary care, preventive medicine, pre-and post-natal care for mothers, and health education services are available. Any major medical issues require the transport of patients down the mountain to more sophisticated medical treatment. Staff members also go out to more remote areas to extend these services. However, there are no dental services.
In our meetings with the Parish Council and discussions with the Pastor and some of his staff, it was made very clear that a dental mission was something that would be of great benefit to the people of the region. We also saw people with severe tooth aches, swollen jaws and in considerable pain.It seems obvious to me that here is a recognized issue for which services have been requested and might be the object of at least one missionary project.
4 comments:
I was not sure what to expect at this 1st meeting but was quite surprised to see how many physicians and nures practioners ther were.
I feel like we all would like to put or tallents to great use and maybe that would be best done to hook up with an organization that already has the means to utilize our talents.
Having only been to our sister parish in Haiti once I did see many needs.The needs are overwhelming to me! I have to agree with Dr.Mortel that as the proverb goes,you can feed a person for a day or you can teach them to feed themselves for life,something like that.
If we can teach our brothers and sisters how to live healthier by having clean water and how to avoid contracting parasites would that not be something of sinificant benefit, this would not only be for the children but also for the adults.
All we saw in Desarmes, where our sister parish is,was a clinic area with no supplies. I have no idea what the clinic is able to provde in terms of health care. We just visited and delivered the few supplies that we had as donations. When we go back we could meet with those indivduals from the clinic amd ask how we could be of service, what are their needs.We could also be armed with information on where the people might be able to get some of the services they need.As a matter of fact Fr. Mackenzy was just here to Saint Clare in Essex, this past weekend and had questions about a little 8 year old who he wanted to possibly bring to the US for surgery and he wanted to know if this was possible.From what I heard at the meeting the gentleman who is a pediatric anesthesiologist who said that he had done a mission trip to Haiti with "Cure Internationl" and they had done surgeries, so I wonder if this would be a better avenue for this girl's treatment.Maybe we could gather information as to what is available within the country of Haiti and how to get the people to these services.
I am going to go to the"World Health Organization" web site and see if there is any information available there that can be of assistance.
Just my own thoughts...
Peg Scloer
I agree I was also impressed by the number present at this first meeting. I think each sister parish has different needs. OUrs in very remote, however, they have a great clinic supported by Inter-Aide a french organization. They are able to provide preventive as well as curative medicine, birthing classes, immunization. Their need is for surgical and dental help, but no real set-up at the clinic for either.
I did meet a lady on my last trip to Haiti. She was returning from Haiti. She is part of a non-profit organization that post mission and information you might want to take a look at it there are several organizations we might be able to tap some of them.
www.thehaiticonnection.org
I just want to say thank you to Mike GOff for his help in setting-up this blog and his continued commitment to our brothers and sisters in Haiti.
After last night's meeting, I came home all pumped up about sharing the experience we have had in our sister parish in Haiti. When asked about priorities for his community, the pastor of Dessalines asked us to put together an educational program of simple first aid to be taught to the teachers in the schools of St Claire. The idea was to instruct the teachers in simple techniques to teach basic hygiene, take care of bumps and bruises on the playground, treat minor wounds and recognize more important health problems in the students. We put together a 7 pages booklet (both sides) with basic instructions in Creole, laminated it and gave several copies to the schools of the parish. We did the actual instruction sessions in one school and plan on instructing more schools next February. We were also surprised to find out that the middle school girls had never been taught about puberty and menstruation and were in general ignorant and apprehensive about the changes in their bodies. We improvised a short educational program for them and we were surprised how well it was received and how helpful it seemed to be. One of the main sources for the materials we used is the Hesperian Foundation: www.hesparian.org It has a wealth of information and publications available either by download or purchase. We purchased the "Kote ki pa gen dokte" book in Creole and downloaded the equivalent pages in English from the website version: "When there is no doctor". This book, for public health workers in third world communities is very informative. There are also publications about clean water and other topics.
Agnes -
I believe that there is a small typo in the web address that you mentioned.
For anyone that wants to visit the site here is the link for the Hesparian Foundation
Mike
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