Provide Physical Therapy to Port-de-Paix, Haiti

     We hope this newsletter finds you and your family healthy! It is hard to believe in this modern day and age that a disease has caused such devastation across the globe. Just like us, Haiti has been hit hard by COVID, but the impact is far more significant for Haiti. They do not have the infrastructure or resources to rebound from the huge impact this has had on the already fragile economy. Life was hard in Port de Paix before COVID, now it is even harder. The coming months are going to see continued illness, not only from COVID, but starvation and lack of access to clean drinking water as well. Due to the COVID global crisis, medical care in Haiti is at an all-time low. Several of the larger hospitals in the cities have had to shut down due to staff being sick, no access to medications and no funding. Smaller village and pop up clinics, supported by foreign nationals and missionaries, have had to close their doors as well due to travel restrictions. All in all, Haitians have very limited access to healthcare currently, and it does not look like this will improve in the coming months.

     That being said, the STAND clinic is working hard to keep the Port de Paix community healthy. We have expanded our waiting room to allow for social distancing, added a hand washing station, require masks of any adult who enters the building and hired a full-time cleaning crew to wash the treatment area several times per day. Through the hard work of the Haitian clinicians and Autumn Marshall, the pediatric clinic has grown during this time. There are 58 new kids enrolled in the STAND pediatric program and 100 new children enrolled in our new public vitamin program. We also initiated a prenatal vitamin program, that currently provides much needed vitamins to 15 moms. We continue to send children to Port au Prince for life saving surgeries, and our nurses are tirelessly performing home visits and educating families about how to stay safe during COVID. 

     Our adult rehab program is expanding as well. Nicholson is working hard to recruit patients as well as treat current patients. In addition, he continues to go out into the community to educate on stroke prevention, blood pressure management as well as signs and symptoms of a stroke.

     Thank you for all the support that you have shown to the STAND team so far. Your generosity has allowed us to make huge strides in bringing good medical and rehabilitative care year -round to Port de Paix as well as make the necessary improvements to our clinic to ensure the safety of our staff and patients during COVID. We need your help now more than ever. Outside of donations from wonderful humans like yourself, we rely heavily on funding the clinic through volunteer trips. This past year we have had to cancel three trips due to the economic crisis as well as COVID. Even though the trips have been canceled, we continue to pay all our staff (about 50 people) partial salaries. We do this because our staff rely on us for a consistent salary. This is more important now more than ever as prices for everything, especially basic needs such as food and water, have increased exponentially. Our Haitian clinicians are working hard to keep our community healthy and our clinic going strong. Let’s keep the momentum going!