Okay, we all know that I have fallen behind in my reports on
the latest news from Haiti Adventist Hospital.
I am sorry. Generous donors,
eager volunteers, and interested supporters have been patiently awaiting this
long overdue report.
This report is prompted by some exciting projects that are
taking place as well as some generous end of year donations that will bring
them to reality in 2014. It should be
remembered that January 12 marked the 4th year anniversary of a day
that changed the landscape of Haiti.
Many lives ended that day; many were changed forever, including my
own. The question I get asked the most
frequently is “are things getting any better down there?” A hard question to answer. Are things getting better anywhere in the
world? Will it be good that soon you
will be able to stay in a Marriott Hotel in Port au Prince rather than staying
at a locally owned place where dinner takes 3 hours to be served, they are out
of 3 items on the menu and you might get sick the next day? Maybe that is good. Maybe it will give local workers some low
paying jobs. Maybe it will stimulate
economic activity. Or maybe it will just
return the majority of your tourist dollar to corporate America. Do we measure improvement in terms of GDP and
creature comforts or strong faith, interpersonal relationships, and love for
God? If it is the latter then don’t
forget that Haiti is already more advanced than the United States.
Independent of these difficult questions is the fact that
health and healing is always needed and in the last 4 years many people have
participated in providing this to the Haitian people. The hospital has recently faced some
significant economic challenges. Part of
this is due to the fact that charity care does not provide salaries for the
nurses, pay the utility bills, and maintain the infrastructure. The amount of volunteer services has had a
significant impact on medical economics throughout the country making it more
difficult to provide profitable services in the health care industry. Balancing affordable care for the poor with
profit generating health care services is always a challenge. In the last 4 years the emphasis has been
much more on the former than on the latter.
Sound business plans have yet to be developed. Two very important concepts are necessary in
order to successfully take care of patients with and without resources in a
mission hospital:
1.
Excellent Services
2.
Provision for charity
With top quality services people with resources can be
attracted and charged for services.
Donors and volunteers will want to participate in something of quality
but it must be made available to people even if they have limited resources.
In the interest of both of these concepts, construction is
scheduled to start this month to renovate the operating room suite, create a
new clinical lab, and create an outpatient clinic area in the polyclinic
building out front. I have been most
closely involved with the operating room project. This will include enlarging the two existing
theatres and doubling the size of the third minor procedure room to make three
reasonably sized theatres. Other
improvements include:
- · Operating room lights
- · Central suction
- · New autoclaves
- · New flooring
- · Recovery room
- · Expansion of storage space
- · Staff male and female toilets
- · Dressing room
- · Break room
- · Centrally plumbed medical gases
- · New doors
- · New cabinets
- · Electrical update with backup power system
The space requirements will be accommodated by moving the
front set of double doors towards the central nurses station which will
significantly increase the amount of available space.
The new clinical lab will be on the main floor at the end of
the hall on the right which was used for a period of time as a central
depot. As with the operating room,
professionals of various disciplines have been involved in the layout and
design of this project. The challenge of
creating a top quality facility with the given space constraints and other
considerations of practicality has not been easy, but I am confident that the
hard work we have all been putting into making this a success will pay off and
that our operating rooms and lab will be some of the best in the entire
country. A big thank you to all who have
supported this project with your generous donations, time and expertise. Stay tuned.
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