Support needed for Haiti outreach: NT UMs bring love, expertise to medical mission

BY JEANNINE HATT, MD
Waples UMC, Denison

Empowering an entire community to care for the health of its children is effective, powerful, and sustainable. This is the philosophy of International Child Care (ICC), part of the UM ADVANCE FOR CHRIST that has served impoverished children and families in Haiti since 1967 and the Dominican Republic since 1988.

ICC partners with communities to advance health and wellness through education, health promotion, child health clinics, immunization programs, birth attendant training, literacy training and micro-enterprise projects. Programs such as these are vital in a country such as Haiti, which has the unfortunate distinction of being the poorest country and having the highest child mortality rate in our hemisphere.

ICC has received support from United Methodist churches and individuals since it was established by a U.S. Methodist couple who, while visiting Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on a cruise in the mid-1960’s, were horrified by the number of children they saw on the streets dying from tuberculosis.

In response, they established a small hospital, which now has grown into Grace Children’s Hospital’s in-patient unit and large out-patient complex for children and families and has expanded into community based health programs throughout the country.

Today, ICC takes great pride in its all Haitian fi eld program staff while ICC’s U.S. office focuses on providing funding and resources for the doctors, nurses and healthcare workers who are serving on the front lines every day. ICC USA’s mission also involves the transformation of participants from the U.S. through program visits and education on the struggles faced by families living in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Now, ICC is adding a new dimension to its services. In the fall of 2007 a request came from the ICC-supported rural integrated community health programs in northern Haiti for support from U.S. medical volunteer teams.

The small hospital in Grande Riviere du Nord and its mobile clinic system are overwhelmed by the needs of the many small communities scattered throughout northern Haiti. They believe that visiting physicians and nurses could bring in needed manpower, medical supplies, pharmaceuticals and provide a means for medical education and information exchange.

In response, ICC USA began exploring the best way for volunteer U.S. medical teams to empower local Haitian healthcare professionals and help sustain community health programs and clinics that would best serve children and families.

Medical volunteers
I have had the privilege of serving on International Child Care USA’s Board of Directors for the past eight years. As a pediatrician with a special interest in international child health, I, along with my husband, Dr. Chuck Phelps, have been a medical volunteer for the past 20 years.

We are active members of Waples Memorial UMC, Denison, and have worked with several UM Volunteers in Mission (VIM) medical teams. However, I was attracted to ICC because of its outstanding philosophy of empowerment, sustainability and focus on education and preventive health programs.

NTC leadership
Serving as chair of ICC USA’s Medical Resources Committee, I have been able to work with distinguished conference colleagues, such as Dr. Ellen Palmer, spouse of NTC pastor Rev. Jim Palmer, First UMC, McKinney, and others from all over the nation.

It is our committee that has begun to work on responding to the requested needs of these medically underserved areas of Haiti. A year before our team’s arrival, we sent ICC USA representatives to visit with the ICC administrators in Grande Riviere du Nord and last spring sent a Mission Education

Encounter Team of North Texas physicians, nurses and UM representatives to visit and learn of the needs in these rural ICC programs. Although our committee has organized medical education conferences and exchanges at Grace Children’s Hospital, this was our fi rst medical team to Haiti for the purpose of direct patient care. We concluded it was time for ICC to take on this pilot program and soon had a group of team members from Texas, California and Ohio. Our group of fi ve physicians, three nurses, one medical student and three support staff met for the first time in the airport of the northern city of Cap Haitian where ICC has its northern office.

Everyone was drenched in sweat as we loaded our pharmaceuticals and supplies into ICC vehicles and set out on the one to two hour ride over rough unpaved roads. Grande Riviere du Nord (GRN) is a small quiet community along a river which flows through the surrounding wooded hills. As we drove into the town, we were met by many curious faces as not many ‘blans’, the Creole term for ‘white people’, were seen in this area of Haiti.

We were pleased to find that the simple two bedroom home, which had been donated for the week by a local family, had intermittent running water and electricity provided by a generator. Meals were prepared by local cooks and were quite tasty, consisting of typical Haitian cuisine. And the house was walking distance from the small hospital.

Hospital Grande Riviere du Nord, which serves a large area of Haiti’s rural north, is open air with several different one room wards. After a brief tour and meeting our translators (few of us speak Haitian Creole, or French, well), we set tents up in the yard where part of our group provided a make-shift clinic during the week. We were pleased to learn that some of the local ICC Haitian doctors and nurses would work as part of our team as we knew it would be valuable to consult with each other on cases and know that there were resources for referring patients who needed hospitalization or follow-up.
 
Mobile clinics
During our stay, we also traveled out in mobile clinics to several of the smaller communities. We brought with us our large pharmacy which included thousands of vitamins and children’s pain medications donated by the Northeast Dallas UM Women and antibiotics and antiparasitics, purchased with monies donated by Waples UMC, and through the generosity of local north Texas pharmacies.

Our first mobile clinic was to the village of Jolitrou, a 45-minute drive into the hills on rutted dirt roads. The clinic was recently built on a plot of land purchased with the hardearned monies of the women in the community involved in ICC’s microenterprise programs.

ICC is able to provide Haitian staff to work the clinic twice a month, but the remainder of the time, the clinic and pharmacy shelves are empty.  Although we arrived early in the morning, we were shocked to see the large crowds surrounding the small green and white clinic building and struggled to make our way across the yard and through the packed waiting room and hallway. Our pharmaceuticals soon fi lled shelves and two of our nurses, Dr. Palmer and Lumanie Bangerter, began registering patients. We physicians began examining and treating the hundreds of men, women and children who were patiently standing out in the sweltering heat. Many had walked several hours to be seen and most waited long hours in the hot Haitian sun.

Because we had three pediatricians in our group, we expected to see mostly children. However, we were surprised at how many ill adults there were, especially among the elderly. Illnesses were typical of those who live in poverty with intestinal complaints, skin diseases, respiratory infections and malnutrition in the children. Adults presented with chronic aches and pains, skin diseases, cataracts, hearing loss, malignancies, trauma, diabetes and many had severe hypertension. Several cases of malaria were identified and at least one new case of pediatric HIV infection was diagnosed. ICC, fortunately, had an HIV counselor available onsite at the clinics to assist these children and families into appropriate care. Everyone waiting was patient, polite, and always showed gratitude on both arriving into our exam stations and when carrying their prescriptions to our pharmacy. I was touched by the gentleness and humility of these people.

We examined and treated well over 1,500 men, women and children during the week and were able to donate our leftover medications to the Grande Riviere du Nord Hospital where they would be used for patients who could not pay the small fees requested for pharmaceuticals. Our team members were exhausted from the busy days and challenging working conditions but all felt that there was potential to grow and improve the value in this collaborative effort.

Taking ownership
Bangerter, a Haitian-American nurse on the team, was impressed with how the local population had taken ownership in improving the health of their communities. She was particularly touched by the impressive efforts of the people of Jolitrou and their desire to have a full-time nurse and more frequent clinic days with a physician so that they could put the clinic they worked so hard to build to good use. We all agreed that sending US physicians for specialty clinics such as cardiology, gynecology, nephrology and hypertension and ophthalmology would  help with unmet needs.

Dr. David and Michele Imler of Shawnee UMC, Lima, OH, said of their experience, “We were able to see the possibilities of utilizing ICC’s American connections with medical teams to help the Haitian physician’s and staff work with the Haitian people on a daily basis. Helping the Haitian people help themselves can make a longterm difference.”

Medical student, Sally Greenwald, observed how vital it was to have local ICC doctors, translators and staff working with us, and Dr. Dan Imler from Stanford and Dr. Julia McDonald from CMC-Dallas expanded on the importance of Haitian and US physicians and nurses working side-by-side to learn from each other and to improve patient care.

They would like to see a connection between US medical education institutions and Haiti for more collaborative efforts in education, resource building  and research.

VIM teams needed
Dr. Palmer would like to see ICC supported communities such as Grande Riviere du Nord and Jolitrou receive UM VIM teams. ICC’s Medical resources Committee is working with ICC Haiti to establish this connection. Dr. Rudy Magloire, new director of ICC Haiti states that he is very supportive of these valuable activities and wishes to see them grow.

Dr. Chuck Phelps comments that, “it is the establishment of ongoing relationships that bring the most value in supporting these communities and in helping them grow and sustain their health programs.” And this is what ICC plans to do.

For further information on ICC’s programs as well as updates on medical service opportunities as they develop, visit website: www.intlchildcare.org.

For more information on NTC involvement, e-mail: Jeannine Hatt: jhattmd@gmail.com or Dr. Palmer: ellenlpalmer@tx.rr.com.

  

 

Dr. Chuck Phelps converses with patient during a mission trip.

Dr. Ellen Palmer, seated at the table, and Dr.Jeannine Hatt,
right, work with local staff and volunteers.

 PHOTO BY KEITH MUMMA