Haiti Report 3: March 2010

Dear Folks,

This is our third Haiti report and it includes the new Haiti Project calendar we promised you - as well as our proposal for a permanent center. Tim has made eight trips to Haiti since the earthquake and I have made four of those with him. Because of the destruction, it has been difficult finding sites for housing, food preparation, and facilities for Medical/Dental clinics and especially for surgery.

June 5-12 Eye Project- Surgery & Optical, June 26- July 3 Integrated Health project, and July 11-18 Dental project are already on our MMI calendar.

These are the new projects:

July 24 – August 7 in PaP - Dental and General Medicine (surgery pending)
September 25-October 2 in PaP - Dental and General Medicine
October 30- November 13 in PaP - Dental and General Medicine (surgery pending)

Please check our web site to know if/when surgery is added.

You have below our proposal for the long haul. As always, you can give to the Haiti Fund at www.mmint.org.

William T. Hunter, Jr.
Executive Director
Medical Ministry International
March 03, 2010
Santo Domingo

An Island Proposal
of
Coherence

re-lief – removal or lightening of something oppressive, painful or distressing, Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition

Definitions

Often you may have seen or heard us say that “MMI is not a relief organization.” so I come to you with a certain, limited denial of our longstanding dictum. Of course, we mean to say, we don’t have a field hospital ready to roll out of warehouses that are filled to overflowing and awaiting the next catastrophe to visit destruction on some human population. We are the “long haul” people of the earth in service to our Lord and the poor of the world. If someone were to offer us a field hospital, we would decline knowing we won’t choose to fund its maintenance in lieu of our ongoing, short-term projects and permanent centers.

But that is not all there is to “removal or lightening of something oppressive, painful or distressing.” The ultimate relief is a return to normalcy which entails the reestablishment of conditions people were familiar with – the corner store is open, the gas stations have fuel, the streets are passable, horns are honking, dogs are barking, the neighbor lady is singing as she cooks, the mango tree is “dripping” fruit, the tropical roosters crow all night, the uniformed children walk to school, the electrical power goes off as expected, hospitals care for emergencies and deliver babies, rain showers refresh the midday heat, and calm prevails. When the normal state of things is suspended, chaos reigns, everyone suffers, and the poor suffer more.

MMIers make every effort to meet our calendar of commitments to arrive and give short-term care as soon after a catastrophe as possible. We proceed with that, with almost no changes, because we have given our word and our compliance is normal for the people awaiting us. Thousands of others, more prepared for disasters than we, will rush in with massive help. Everything will be free and even surviving businesses will go broke and may never return. In that vein, it was decreed in Port au Prince (PaP) that no medical hospital or clinic can charge for services. Maybe there is no other way to do this kind of relief?

Nonetheless, we will continue to meet the more predictable clinical and surgical schedule that will lead to the establishment of permanent, all year long care for which people will pay as usual. Indeed, early on, our fees may drop to meet the dire aftermath and they will even disappear in some cases. We will continue to move toward what can be counted on, what will persist through time. God willing, we intend to be on the “front edge” of the relief leading to normalcy.

When we enunciate our understanding of the world and its catastrophes, many people respond, “that makes sense,” but to many more it makes no sense at all – the emergency is everything. We, of course, agree that those organized for the emergent should respond appropriately. We have emergency rooms in our hospitals but the whole hospital is not organized just for disasters. We are among those organized for keeping on when things seem to be paralyzed.

The Haiti/Island Application

We have heard and even met many MMIers who responded, on their own, to the disaster in Haiti. They were able to arrange travel with governments and relief organizations and arrived early enough or remotely enough from the epicenter of chaos to be able to assist in the care of the injured and dying. We surveyed the situation in PaP while delivering, medicine, food, and shelter. Most places where we might have accommodated MMI teams were destroyed and operating rooms were over-staffed by doctors from the governments of the world.

The Progression

Haiti was among the first three countries in which MMI worked from the beginning in 1969, along with the Dominican Republic and Honduras. Our policy for working in any country includes our ongoing welcome, both local and official. Our welcome back then shrunk consistently until it did not exist. We withdrew following the teaching Jesus proclaimed when he sent out the twelve disciples telling them “If people do not welcome you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave…” Luke 9:1-6

Long before the earthquake struck, MMI was preparing for Haiti again. In 1979, after Hurricane David devastated the Dominican side of the island, we continued our optical service and training program on the ground floor of a damaged bank that was still standing. By 1985, with a combination of patient fees from the optical shop, donations remaining from the hurricane, and new donations, we established the Dr. Elias Santana/Esperanza Center that has since treated more than 3,000,000 patients from our population of 10,000,000.

Under the hand of Dr. Juan Batlle, we founded the eye residency and fellowship program that has now trained nearly 200 eye doctors. Among those are four connected directly to Haiti. One is Dominican, married to one of the two Haitians. Those three, our Haiti Director, Tim DeYoung, and his DDS wife (in her 8^th month of pregnancy) Paola, were in PaP when the earth moved - shattering the city and killing well over 200,000 people. A young Haitian woman was absent from PaP because she was finishing up her studies as an Ophthalmic Tech in our MMI Center in Ecuador. We have another Haitian doctor who has completed his residency in our MMI Mexico program and is now in his two year retina fellowship. These seven people, under the hand of God, are the human core of our hopes for the new normalcy in Haiti/PaP for which God has prepared MMI. 

With many details to be worked out, we are planning:

1. To establish the MMI PaP permanent center as an extension of the Santana/Esperanza center (wholly owned by Centro Cristiano de Servicios Medicos in Santo Domingo). Thus all the Santana/Esperanza Administrative Team will assist in the organization and management of the PaP center. Also entailed are the acquisition of land, construction, and equipping the center at an approximate cost of $1M.
2. To build a guest house for 20 people to house the visiting Santana Professors and MMI teams. This will cost around $75,000.00.
3. To continue with MMI dental services under the direction of Dr. Paola Diaz.
4. To initiate our Haiti Blindness Prevention program under the direction of Dr. Evelyn Diaz of Santana. This will be coordinated with our Drs. Pierre Yves De Castro and his wife Cidelise Medina of PaP, and our Ophthalmic Tech, Wislande Joseph. We operate this blindness prevention program in the DR in cooperation with the Dominican First Lady and are investigating the possibility of doing the same with the First Lady of Haiti. We will need equipment and vehicles for this program, amounting to $50,000-$75,000.
5. To establish the extension of the Santana Ophthalmology Residency and Fellowship program in PaP. This begins with the selection of the first PaP-Santana residency candidate to join our Prevention of Blindness Team for one year before beginning residency proper. Another residency candidate will enter the blindness prevention preparatory every six months insuring the flow of doctors moving toward specialty and sub-specialty training. Simultaneously, we will establish the Ophthalmic Tech Training program of two years. Thus, our Haitian Medical Professors and Technical Staff will have the direct support of our 25 member Ophthalmology Faculty and our 4 member Ophthalmic Tech Faculty in Santo Domingo.
6. To establish the extension of the MMI Audiology Training program under the direction of Donna Carkeet. Equipment for this will cost $40,000 - $50,000.
7. To establish a Santana sub-center in Azua, Dominican Republic, where we currently have just an optical shop. This center will be equipped to do cataracts and minor procedures as well as to provide rotations for third year Haitian residents; it will also serve as a strategic “bridge” to the PaP extension. Building and equipping this center will cost approximately $500,000.00.

The Reach

On the night of the earthquake, the Dominican Government organized and crossed the border the next morning with hundreds of medical volunteers, search and rescue volunteers, ten mobile kitchens, tons of food, and thousands of gallons of potable water.

This coherent proposal of personnel and physical facilities is one way for us as agents of the Good News of Jesus, among and with the 20,000,000 people of this island at the center of the world, to move beyond the old normalcy. If it be God’s will to bring this to fruition, Dominicans, Haitians and all MMIers will see a border of historical strife become a pathway of friendship and brotherhood. The first steps have been taken. But the new normalcy comes and is improved by healing through time and into eternity.

William T. Hunter, Jr.
Executive Director
Medical Ministry International
March 03, 2010
Santo Domingo


Read Haiti Report 2: February 2010
Read Haiti Report 1: January 22, 2010