Partners in Health has delivered rural health care in Haiti for 20 years, establishing the global model for rural health services, doing what no one thought could be done. Partners in Health needs your help to meet the needs in Haiti.
$10,000 Matching grant. Donate here.
Pulitzer Prize winning writer Tracy Kidder, who wrote the book, Mountains Beyond Mountains about Dr. Farmer's work in Haiti reports with hope on the earthquake caused crisis.
The catastrophe in Haiti spared the country’s largest – and, I believe, most effective – rural health care provider, Partners In Health. The organization’s principal founder, Dr. Paul Farmer, is on his way to Haiti now with a surgical team. The staff already in Haiti will welcome his arrival, but they have been at work for days now. Indeed, they were some of the first medical personnel to respond to the crisis. This is a large, highly skilled group of about 2000 community health workers, 500 nurses, and 120 doctors. All but a few of them are Haitian. They are spread out now. Thousands of injured people have been traveling from the capital to the hospitals that PIH operates, along with the Ministry of Health, in the Central Plateau – 10 hospitals, all well-equipped and fully functional. Others of the PIH-Haiti team are in the capital Port-au-Prince, where they have set up mobile clinics and where they are now establishing a central base of operations. The plan is to provide emergency care to all comers and to stabilize patients who need higher levels of care and arrange to get them to the PIH hospitals.
Personally, I take hope from the example that PIH has set and is setting again. I think it is one excellent model for the reconstruction of Haiti to come: an endeavor that employs and trains Haitians every step of the way, that builds infrastructure while attending to the basic needs of the poor, that does all it can to strengthen the public sector.
Many people have been writing to ask what they can do. Paul reports, "I just talked to some of my Haitian coworkers who are in Port-au-Prince in the general hospital, and they’ve reported to work. [But] they don't have electricity yet. They don't have the supplies that they need. But there's a lot of Haitian health professionals, doctors, nurses, aides who would like to [do their job], but to do that you need the supplies. You have to have the basics. Gauze, plaster, or other casts. You have to have the equipment that you need. Anesthesia, pain medications, antibiotics. And that's what some of my medical colleagues are asking us for, supplies."
PIH is purchasing and procuring donated supplies around the clock. To aid in these efforts, please consider making a donation to their efforts today.
- Tracy Kidder
Paul Farmer, the U.N.'s special envoy to Haiti was one of the cofounders of Partners in Health. He is a true progressive with a stellar record of service to humanity.
Paul Farmer (born October 26, 1959) is an American anthropologist and physician, the Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard University and an attending physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. In May 2009 he was named chairman of Harvard Medical School's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, succeeding his longtime friend and collaborator Dr. Jim Kim.[1]
He currently resides in Kigali, Rwanda. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease. Farmer is one of the founders of Partners In Health (PIH), an international health and social justice organization. His work is the subject of Tracy Kidder's 2003 book Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World. Dr. Farmer was mentioned as a possible nominee to head the U.S. Agency for International Development[2], but his nomination was reportedly blocked by the White House[3]. In August 2009, Paul Farmer was named United Nations Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti to assist in improving the economic and social conditions of the Caribbean nation[4].
The Partners in Health hospital in Hinche, undamaged by the earthquake because it was not too close to the epicenter, is receiving victims now.
Your help is needed so to meet the enormous need. Donate here.
Partners in health has been building solar powered modern rural hospitals so that they can operate off the grid, not dependent on diesel fuel. Fuel deliveries get interrupted because Haiti's rural dirt roads get blocked by flooding.
New solar powered rural hospital in Haiti.
Installing the solar power system in Haiti.
Volunteer surgeons, surgical techs, OR nurses, post-op nurses and nurse anesthetists are needed.
From our news feed: messages from PIH/ZL staff
01/16/2010
What's been on the minds of Partners In Health/Zanmi Lasante staff over the past 24 hours? Below are just a few thoughts plucked from the torrent of emails that circulated through our servers:
• From ER in Hinche: "Patients trickling in throughout the night. Doing all the surgeries we can around the clock."
• From St. Marc Hospital: "We are receiving a lot of people. Most of them are surgery cases. We have operating rooms, anesthesiologist, nurses, equipment but no surgeons."
• From a PIH doctor helping out at Diquini Hospital: "There are about hundred people lying on the floor and suffering. The pharmacy there ran out... Now I worry about infections of wounds and septicemia."
• From Belledere: CHAI truck from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic arrives with surgical supplies and "First Things First" kits.
• From Florida: Planes with surgical teams (30 people) arriving in Port-au-Prince later today!
• In Cange: Getting desperate for diesel. Fuel costs are soaring to $25/gallon in-country.
