Going to Haiti

Dear family, friends and colleagues,

On March 15, I will be departing for a one week medical mission to Haiti. This mission is through the Care to Share program sponsored by the Catholic Diocese of Palm Beach, Florida. Juliet Geiger, my professional counterpart in Pennsylvania, has created a blog to get the word out in hopes that it will inspire others to join us or to donate. It can be found at http://chantalhaitimission.wordpress.com/.

The town we are going to is called Chantal. It is 250 miles southwest of Port Au Prince. It is a very rural community with subsistence farming and some rice agriculture. It is normally a village of about 1,500 people but that has doubled with refugees from last year’s earthquake.

Why Chantal? The big NGOs are set up pretty well in Port Au Prince and the Haitian government asked that other groups travel to the hinterlands to care for the displaced. There are over 2 million internally displaced people in Haiti right now. With the surrounding mountain villages and seaside villages many hundreds more folks come to clinic there, often walking 4-5 hours to be seen.  There is no doctor or dentist or pharmacy within hours of Chantal by vehicle.  Two nursing sisters at the local Church run a small dispensary and are providing us with a site. One of the team members who is returning said they (7 doctors, 7 nurses, a dentist, a pharmacist and 20 non-medical helpers) saw 4,000 people in four days last August.

At this time, the team is all but complete but we are still in need of physicians and in special need of a dentist. Juliet’s blog has contact information if you (or a physician, or a dentist you know) are interested in joining us.

So what do we need? Money works really well (Juliet’s blog has the information on where to send your generous donations). It will be used to build a permanent clinic in Chantal, buying water purification systems (www.edgeoutreach.com), and stocking the Chantal clinic with medications and medical supplies. Through special relief programs like Crosslink and MAP International (www.map.org), $1,500 dollars will purchase $13,000 retail value of medications to treat diarrhea, malaria, anthrax, hypertension, parasites and cholera.

We can also use medicine and vitamins that we can take with us. Once again, Juliet’s blog has some good details.

In terms of durable medical equipment, if you happen to have otoscopes or ophthalmoscopes sitting around, Chantal’s clinic is in serious need.

Finally, we can always use prayers and good wishes.

Please let me know if you have any questions (and to get two out of the way: 1) I still have all my marbles, and 2) yes, Shelagh knows that I’m going).

Thanks and God bless!

Tim