Hurricane Matthew pounded Haiti with 145 mph winds and 50 ft. waves. The devastation and injuries are significant, and Heart to Heart International is already responding on the south coast of Haiti where the storm was most intense. Our Haitian medical teams are already there providing help to those injured.
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Haitians greet one of our medical teams as they arrive! Watch the video, here!
The storm’s tidal surge flooded coastal towns and destroyed homes. 546 deaths & 438 injured as a result of the hurricane.
Our U.S. disaster response team is in Haiti and will provide more urgently needed medical support to the hardest hit areas.
HHI needs your financial support to mount this response. We’ve sent 6 teams of 8 – 10 doctors, PA’s, NP’s, nurses, EMT’s, paramedics, and social workers in by helicopter since many roads and bridges are impassible. We have helped over 9,000 patients as of October. Our medical teams are bringing the most injured out to hospitals where they can receive lifesaving care. But this is expensive and we need our donors to help us in this response.
Please donate immediately!
Tragically, cholera has broken out, and our teams are seeing more and more cholera patients each day.
100% of designated donations (this includes associated overhead expenses) will go to this particular crisis
TouchNet waives all credit card fees so your donation will have the biggest impact possible!
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Emergency Response: Hurricane Matthew – Haiti Recovery
It has now been over a month since Hurricane Matthew hit Haiti. We have moved from disaster response mode to recovery. Over 10,000 patients have been treated for injury, sickness, and various other medical needs. Thirty pallets of medicines, medical supplies, and hygiene kits were shipped in by FedEx and are now being distributed. The shipment is helping aid Haitians and improving the health situation. Contaminated drinking water is the number one health concern. Cholera and other acute diarrheal diseases are the biggest threat post-disaster, putting the lives of thousands of children and the elderly in danger.
Cholera Treatment Unit – Marfranc, Haiti
The cholera treatment unit was damaged in the storm and we have it rebuilt. Besides patching up the roof, most of the items inside need to be replaced to make it a functioning center. We are also restoring the medical clinic that was totally destroyed in the hurricane.
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Haitians waiting to see doctors & to get medicine in Anse-à-Pitres, Haiti.
Dr. Gary Morsch, founder of HHI, directs first responders in Haiti.
Stories
October 22, 2016
By: Jim Mitchum
HHI-Haiti has been assigned to Marfranc by MSPP (the MOH) to repair and operate a Cholera Treatment Unit and a Primary Care Clinic. Both facilities were damaged during the hurricane, and we have already sent a repair crew to work on the CTU. After it is repaired, we will hire a Haitian team to run the CTU…expected to take 23 people to run it. Those will be local Haitian docs and nurses (nurses primarily).
The clinic building, more heavily damaged, will take more time and money to return to working order. In the meantime, we are operating a mobile clinic in Marfranc with a Haitian medical team and will be holding mobile clinics around that commune (23,000 people). The duration of our assignment is 3 months but could be extended.
October 20th, 2016
By: John Caron
I’m posting this on my way home from 35,000 feet. What a strange world we find ourselves in where this is possible. Just two days ago our team was running a clinic out of a rustic schoolhouse in a remote area of Haiti only accessible by SUV. Equally strange is that at this time tomorrow I will be working in a modern emergency department back in the U.S. What a glaring disparity in resources and privilege.
Our group’s final days in Haiti were very busy. We split into two small teams before being dispatched to separate and remote locations. The team I was with set up clinic in a schoolhouse in the village of Leon. On our final day we treated around 60 patients.
The last few days in Haiti were a little hectic at times with more challenging cases as we gained access to areas with little or no previous access to healthcare. We came upon diseases which, as a result of easy access to care and immunizations, are rarely seen in the U.S. A patient with tetanus who we were able to start care for before transporting him in the back of our SUV to the hospital in Jeremie. A woman with elephantiasis who we fortunately had appropriate medications to treat. So many others with varying problems, acute and chronic, that hopefully our presence helped.
The people who call Haiti home are amazing.
Resilient in the face of adversity while still maintaining a willingness to smile and laugh. Some of our patients walked as much as five hours to be seen in our clinic. I am humbled by their spirit, resourcefulness and tenacity.
I am honored and grateful to have found myself with an amazing team of nurses, doctors and paramedics. We lived, ate, traveled and worked together in some very challenging and often uncomfortable conditions. Not only did we all get along but we came away as friends. I would deploy again with any member of this team in a heartbeat.
Thank you to Heart to Heart International for making this deployment a reality and making it possible to provide the care we did. An undertaking like this is challenging when you have several weeks to prepare and plan. They pulled it together and put us on the ground in Haiti in a couple of days!
October 17th, 2016
By: Sue Mangicaro
The HHI medical team is working in Marfranc at the local police station and a church.
They have transported two patients to downtown Jeremie for further medical care, including a cholera patient and a patient with very severe tetanus.
Our staff transportation vehicle also serves as a makeshift ambulance. Even after a week, we are still seeing many injured by Hurricane Matthew.
October 14th, 2016
By: Community Health Workers
“Marie, a 22-year-old mother of three, lives in small community and had her house was totally destroyed. Marie had extremely bad pain in her chest, and unable to feed her sons & herself, was losing hope. Her twin sons were also suffering from illness. Kore Fanmi community health workers found Marie right before Hurricane Matthew hit. The community workers took her to a medical clinic, where she received care for herself & babies. Everyone is recovering now and doing fine. Special thanks to the Kore Fanmi team! Bring Hope to Haiti!”
Kore Fanmi is a network of multidisciplinary agents that is considered by many experts to be the closest network to the families, helping them to regain their self-esteem, and reestablishing the social pact between services providers, Haitian Government and the communities
“Kore Fanmi” (meaning family support) is a UNICEF and Heart to Heart International joint project in the Sud-Est.
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