Team effort to save life
Firstly, huge apologies for not writing sooner. I had to dash back to the UK for a few weeks, and Reninca was left holding the fort in Haiti.
However, there have been many highlights since out last blog, with some amazing meetings, stories, and developments etc. For a start, we have a new long term volunteer with us (Laura), thanks to the support of BMS, who has been doing an amazing job here already. She’s going to be living and working for HHA until December, running the Volunteer Village. If you’d like to come and volunteer in Haiti, Laura would love to hear from you: Laura@haitihospitalappeal.org
This week the village has hosted members of The Haiti Health Trust (THHT), a US registered NGO which is supporting HHA. They’ve been an incredible encouragement, training our Inclusive Sports team, and running Leadership workshops. It’s been great to listen to our Haitian management team together, sharing their vision and values for the hospital. Statements like, ‘we want to provide loving, compassionate, professional and dignified health care without any form of discrimination to anyone’ is inspiring to hear. As always, Dr Toussaint, our medical director continues to lead by example, ensuring such statements are lived out, not just spoken.
During Haiti’s national carnival a few weeks back, the Ministry of Health asked to use the Mobile Clinic we run with Konbit Sante, so we could provide emergency assistance in the heart of the carnival. Dr Toussaint agreed, and subsequently worked from 6pm until about 3am on several nights at the carnival, and then got up again in the morning, and did full day shifts.
Aside from THHT, we’ve also had some other amazing visitors, including Midwives for Haiti and Direct Relief International who are interested in working with HHA to develop a midwifery training school at the hospital. It would be an amazing privilege to be involved in training new Midwives, and we’re looking forward to developing that. We also just received another shipment of medical supplies from Direct Relief, with a value of over $200,000US, which as you can imagine, is a great blessing, and really helps us to provide quality health care.
Just last week, as we were sitting in our little temporary hospital chapel, a mother and daughter (Marie) walked in and joined in with the singing. Towards the end of the little service, the mother asked if we could pray for her daughter who’d just been told by our doctors that she needed an urgent operation, otherwise she would die. The daughter wanted to decline, as was understandably terrified. Over the next few days, Marie and her mother kept returning to the little chapel (made of a tent) for further support and counselling. Finally, thanks to the commitment and love of our team (doctors, admin, chaplains etc), Marie decided to have the operation with us.
Today I had the privilege of doing a quick ward round and got to see Marie and her mum, both full of joy, their faces gleaming with beautiful smiles, ready to go home, after the successful surgery. They showed me the pictures of the four growths that had been removed, which were like the size of melons. It was a moving moment, to see how our whole team had been involved in not only offering life saving medical care, but supporting Marie in such a loving and holistic way. These stories happen day after day. What a privilege it is to be here. If you’d like to help fundraise and support other women like Marie, please do get involved. We’d love to hear from you!