Direct Relief supporting the efforts of the Visitation Foundation

Senior Program Officer for Latin America and the Caribbean Dan Smith and Emergency Response Coordinator Brett Williams are traveling throughout Haiti to visit clinics and hospitals Direct Relief International currently supports as well as potential new partners. Smith and Williams are also finalizing plans on expanding Direct Relief’s Hurricane Preparedness Program, which will include Haiti this year.

We got on the road early this morning to avoid the daily traffic jam that so painfully congests Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. Port-au-Prince is a sprawling city of winding roads, green foothills, and shanty towns along what must have once been a beautiful coastline. As Haitians move from rural areas to the capital in search of work and a more prosperous life, the true poverty of this nation becomes apparent. Although the numbers are different in each district, roughly 80 percent of Haiti’s population lives on less that $2 a day.
The slums, such as the infamous Cite Soleil, are bursting at the seams with people and the byproducts of human life. Rivers that empty into the sea have become collections of every kind of plastic imaginable, and with the slightest rain the streets are a soggy collection of trash and mud. Our car slips through the streets of Carrefour, another downtrodden district south of Port-au-Prince, as we try to avoid the lively collection of vendors selling sodas, fried plantains, charcoal, and used clothes on our journey south.
We are heading along Haiti’s southern arm to the city of Petite Riviere de Nippes, where a very determined group has built the Visitation Clinic. As the name suggests, the hope is to have visiting doctors come and share their expertise with the Haitian staff, building the knowledge base of local doctors, providing specialized services, and helping to expand the services the clinic can provide.

Arriving from the U.S. more than 10 years ago, a group of volunteers from the Parish Twining Program, which connects parishes from the U.S. with those in the Caribbean, visited Petite Riviere. They soon realized the immense need for health services, and under the leadership of one volunteer, Teresa Patterson, a foundation was created to help address the problem. The Visitation Foundation was born; regular trips of medical professionals to Petite Riviere were established with the goal of building a permanent clinic run by a Haitian medical staff and available five days a week all year long.
For the past five years, Direct Relief has supported the efforts of the Visitation Foundation with donated medicine and medical supplies hand-carried to Haiti during medical missions. More recently, with the clinic fully functioning, Direct Relief has provided the first of many large-scale donations of specifically requested products.

After a bumpy four-hour journey along dirt and semi-paved roads, we arrived to see the beautiful clinic perched on a hill above the town. The clinic was completed in January 2008 and has already seen over 15,000 patients. When we arrived, the waiting area was full of people, mostly women and children, who start lining up for service at 4:30 a.m. The medical staff is usually able to treat 80 or 90 people a day, and is on-call 24 hours in case of an emergency.
The Visitation Clinic has another unique quality: It’s 100 percent sustainable. The clinic is powered by solar panels on the roof and thus saves a massive amount of money on energy costs and the use of fossil fuels to operate generators. It also has a backup generator in case of an emergency.
Its remote location brings the challenge of referring patients with specialized needs. The clinic has worked very hard to establish relationships with specialists throughout the south and as far as Port-au-Prince, creating a billing service that allows patients to be seen elsewhere without having to pay on the spot because the Visitation Clinic pays the bill at a later date. The Foundation’s long-term goals include building a full hospital on their five acres of fenced land to keep up with expanding patient needs and to avoid having to refer patients to health facilities in Port-au-Prince.

After a short walk to the center of town with the clinic administrator, it’s obvious to us that the community supports the clinic’s work. We were unable to get 100 feet from the gate of the clinic without kids and parents offering their hellos and kids wanting to hold hands and walk with us. By the time we returned to the clinic, it looked as if a small parade had taken place. The clinic has brought healthcare to Petite Riviere, but also hope.
The journey to the Visitation Clinic made us extremely proud to know that the long-term commitment Direct Relief has to helping the people who just need a little boost pays off. The hard work is done by those on the ground, and we feel grateful to be a part of such a wonderful program. The project has grown into one of the best we have seen in Haiti and is completely run by Haitians with the exception of one staff member. Access to health services has been improved in Petite Riviere de Nippes and the goal of equal access to health services for everyone—no matter where you are born—is a little closer.

Source: Direct Relief International.org