Konbit Sante Secures Funds for Pediatric Emergency Room in Cap-Haitien, Haiti:

Konbit Sante Cap-Haitien Health Partnership, a Maine/Haiti health partnership, has been awarded a $30,000 grant from the Dorthea Ross Haus Foundation to build a pediatric emergency room at Justinian Hospital, the largest public hospital in Cap-Haitien, Haiti’s second largest city. The project, which is expected to take six months to complete, will also help improve water and sanitation in the pediatric facility.

This international children’s fund grant will improve and expand critical pediatric care at this 250-bed teaching hospital. “Justinian Hospital’s crowded pediatric facility has a normal inpatient population of about 30 children, with beds often within a foot or two of one another,” notes Nate Nickerson, Konbit Sante’s executive director. “This new facility will represent a great improvement in our Haitian colleagues’ ability to provide good and timely care to critically ill children.”

Konbit Sante works with Haitian partners to improve all aspects of Cap-Haitien’s resource-poor health care system, and pediatric support has been a particular area of concentration. Konbit Sante volunteers have trained pediatric residents in medical care and respiratory therapy, installed a pediatric oxygen delivery system, installed a backup power supply for oxygen concentrators and incubators, constructed a pediatric outpatient facility, and re-started a feeding program for severely malnourished inpatients. In addition, Konbit Sante supports a Haitian pediatric educator as well as a pediatric nurse educator, both of whom have been hosted in Portland for training at Maine Medical Center and the University of Southern Maine’s College of Nursing and Health Professions.

“The children served by Justinian Hospital are in dire need,” continues Nickerson. “In Haiti, one in five children does not survive to age five and children suffer from low daily caloric intake, low immunization rates, and high incidence of tuberculosis and HIV. With Konbit Sante’s help, services at Justinian Hospital have been improving, and there has been a dramatic increase in children served as word reaches the community. While the number is still unacceptably high, the rate of children dying within 24 hours of arrival at the Justinian Hospital is now lower than the national average.”

Started in 2000, Konbit Sante works to improve the public health care system in Cap-Haitien. Rather than developing a second, parallel system, Konbit Sante’s mission is to help build local capacity for Haitians to care for Haitians. Konbit Sante also has ongoing programs in internal medicine, women’s health, and public health.