Exciting news from Hopital Ste. Croix

Lots of things have happened since my last blog, much too long ago. Just to catch everyone up on the goings on:

1. At the last board meeting, a new director was appointed. Dr. Gladys Memnon is a determined woman! She has been working at the hospital since shortly after the earthquake, organizing, directing, making decisions, and moving things forward. She is an OB/Gyn doctor, and under her direction, things are happening.

2. The old Medicine wing of the hospital has been repaired, cleaned, painted, and is being set up with about 30 beds. The plumbing is fixed, the electricity is on, there are fans in the patient rooms. Sheets are on the beds, curtains at the windows, and doctors are ready to make rounds!

3. The Children’s Nutrition Program is moving into the old central supply room and a room next door. They hope to move in next week, and will use the area for their re-nourishment program. Mothers and severely malnourished children are brought into the hospital and the babies are fed ‘plumpy nut‘, a fortified peanut butter that has lots of protein and calories. Most babies start gaining weight immediately, but as they begin to recover, they often get very sick, as their immune systems don’t recover as fast. For this reason, the program needs to be separated from the pediatric area of the hospital.

4. The guesthouse continues to be open for business. We have held our first groups who have come to do mobile clinics! After the earthquake, all of the medical groups worked at the tent hospital across town. The tent hospital did great work, and was staffed almost entirely by volunteer doctors and nurses from everywhere. The tent hospital closed about a week ago. But the villages around the commune (like a county), both those up in the mountains, and along the seaside plains, have had very few mobile clinics. We are excited to begin to do these clinics again. Would you or your church like to organize a group to come down and do a week of clinics? Contact me at hscguesthouse@gmail.com, and I’ll tell you all you need to know.

5. The community health worker program is revitalized. It was severely restricted when the hospital closed about 3 years ago. Now, many new health workers, Ajan Saintes, have been hired and trained, and are working and being paid under the auspices of Hopital Ste. Croix. The Ajan Saintes are in charge of the vaccination programs. The village health workers teach basic health practices, do blood sugar checks, and help find folks who need to come to HSC.

6. The out patient clinic, the laboratory, and the pharmacy are still operating at a busy rate. We are seeing almost 1,000 people a week in the clinic, and the lab and pharmacy are busy supporting the clinic.

Of course, this is not the entire picture, only the good part. The bad part is that the hospital is still short of operating funds. We have had a lot of help in the rebuilding and renovating efforts. Today we are accepting bids from contractors for the remodeling of the 3 story building of the hospital. When this is complete, hopefully in 6-8 months, the patients can be moved into the first floor of the hospital, and the reconstruction of HSC can begin in earnest. Incidentally, the renovation plans include a sewage treatment plant, which might be the first one in Haiti, with the possible exception of the UN and other large NGO’s. But all over the world, the same principle is at work: People are more likely to give money to build a building, but nobody wants to help it to continue. And, since HSC is a mission hospital, and will treat anyone, even if they cannot pay, and since most people in Haiti have trouble feeding their families and can’t pay for emergencies like illness, Hopital Ste. Croix will never be self supporting. Running a hospital in cheaper in Haiti than in the US. $1200 a month will pay for a doctor, and $300 will provide a nurse. Would your church like to put HSC into their mission budget?

But now the big news. The official date to start accepting in patients at HSC is -----SEPTEMBER 1, 2010! Please keep the hospital in your prayers as we take this important step.