Today is, of course, Mother's Day.  In too many parts of the world, becoming a mother is a serious threat to one's health.  Paul Farmer and Ophelia Dahl of Partners in Health remind us in the Washington Post that it doesn't have to be this way. We have the knowledge needed to protect pregnant women and their children.  What is lacking is the will and the committment.  Drawing from their experiences in Haiti, Partners in Health is applying their rights based approach in Rwanda and elsewhere. The article is copied below.   Read more »

Haitian leaders tend to get bogged down in ever-unstable Port au Prince.  It is a matter of political survival.  However, most of Haiti is rural and certainly most of what is good about Haiti is to be found outside of its largest city.  Recently President Preval made a public tour of the Central Plateau.  We were happy to see that public health was a recurring theme of his trip.  Regardless of one's political beliefs, we can all agree increased attention to public health is essential.  When a person has health, a person has hope.  Where there is hope, there is also the possibility of development and a better future.  

Members of the Haiti Innovation Community are by now no doubt familiar with the organization Partners in Health and the pionerring work their team has done in Haiti bringing community based health care to  the lowest possible resource settings, and in particular, developing novel new approaches to treating both HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis.

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An article on the Partners in Health website recently caught my eye.  For those not familiar, Partners in Health is a non profit organization that pioneered community based methods of treating HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in low resource settings with incredible success.  The program started in Haiti and was expanded into Latin America and Africa. 

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Partners in Health, the Haitian organization which pioneered community based treatment of HIV/AIDS in low resource settings, is now operating in a third African country, Malawi. Read more »

arcade fireBelow is an interesting article on a band called Arcade Fire, who we have known about for some time. What we did not know is how involved they have been with Haiti. The band had recently contacted Partners in Health, an important NGO based in Haiti which has pioneered treatment for Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS in low resource settings, to see how they could be involved. Read more »

Thanks to the tireless and persistent work of Partners in Health, Elda has finally received her birth certificate and visa. With those two pieces of paper in hand, Elda and her mother will be traveling to Cleveland this week for the surgery. We are thankful that these last hurdles have been cleared and we can finally provide her with the care she deserves. Please keep Elda in your thoughts and prayers over the coming weeks.
If you would like to help Elda and her family, please contact us at 202-276-1015 or chris@haitiinnovation.org.

Jean Gabriel Fils (known by all as ‘Ti Jean’) was born on Haiti’s Central Plateau, where two members of the Haiti Innovation Board of Directors served as Peace Corps Volunteers. For many years, he worked with, and made strong contributions to Partners in Health, an internationally respected NGO based in Cange. He was thirty-five and leaves behind a wife and eleven children. Read more »

Port-au-Prince – Today, the Reverend Jean Juste was taken by Haitian Government officials to the airport where he was taken to Miami to receive treatment for Leukemia, a six-month battle that has seemingly taken a turn for the better (see my last post here). Read more »

Haiti is now at a critical point with respects to its socioeconomic, political and health conditions. Each of these aspects are intricately woven with one another, as in many nations, however the nature of Haiti's situation is so dependent on the successful resilience of each of these factors. There is optimism for Haiti's reemergence from decades of anguish, and I witnessed tangible progress from the field during my week-long medical mission organized jointly by The George Washington University School of Medicine and Project Medishare.