Support HAS
Main corridor-Hospital Albert Schweitzer (Photo by Melissa Harris)
As part of the mission of Sister Cities Essex Haiti, we actively support Hospital Albert Schweitzer (“HAS”). HAS serves 300,000 people over a 610 square mile area. It has four outlying clinics in towns and in the mountains. Jenifer Grant, director and corporate secretary of SCEH as well as a Board member of Hospital Albert Schweitzer, is the daughter of Larry and Gwen Mellon, the founders of Hospital Albert Schweitzer. She has visited Haiti since the early 1950’s as a young girl. Through her enthusiastic and tireless efforts over the years, she has made thousands of people aware of HAS and Haiti. Many people in the Essex area have accompanied Jenifer to Deschapelles to visit HAS and learn of its good works.
Beginnings
After reading of the work of Dr. Albert Schweitzer in Africa, and his ethic of “Reverence for Life,” Larry and Gwen Mellon, ranchers in Arizona, decided to dedicate the rest of their lives to caring for those in need. Dr. Mellon returned to Tulane University to complete his undergraduate and medical degrees. In 1956, seven years after their decision, they opened the doors to a state of the art hospital, named Hôpital Albert Schweitzer in honor of their mentor, in rural Deschapelles, Haiti. Their goal was to bring health care that was not otherwise available to the people of their defined district. They spent the rest of their lives living in Deschapelles, fulfilling their dream.
A Health System for the Neediest
Today Hospital Albert Schweitzer is a model for health care facilities in developing countries around the world. An integrated rural health system, HAS provides medical care and community health and development programs for more than 300,000 impoverished people in the Artibonite Valley of central Haiti. Visiting medical professionals from North America and abroad work with a permanent Haitian staff of approximately 450. Financial support comes from partner organizations and private individuals around the world.
The Hospital-Saving Lives
On the site of a decommissioned banana plantation, Larry and Gwen Mellon built and staffed a medical complex that fit the needs of a neglected rural population. Today the hospital is a perpetual swirl of peaceful activity, largely sheltered from the natural and civil disruptions of Haitian life. Dealing with the challenges of maternal and child health, malnutrition, physical trauma, and the diseases of tropical poverty, HAS serves as clinic, emergency room, and outpost of hope—headquarters for an integrated health system dedicated to prevention as well as cure. After the January 2010 earthquake, HAS was inundated with patients from Port au Prince, most needing surgery. At one point there were 500 patients in the 80-bed hospital. By the time the emergency teams got set up in Port au Prince, HAS had provided care to over 1,000 patients. They used up six months of supplies in one week.
Hospital Albert Schweitzer (Photo by Melissa Harris)
Cholera tent on HAS grounds
With the recent cholera epidemic in October 2010 and again with the advent of the rainy season in the spring of 2011, HAS established a Cholera Treatment Center which was handling an average daily caseload of 300 patients in May 2011. To combat the spread of cholera, HAS has established effective education programs for the communities throughout their district on how to avoid cholera and the importance of patients seeking medical care when symptoms first arise. Through its outreach programs, it has increased its efforts to install community latrines, wells, and cisterns as long-term preventive measures.
Earthquake victim with her new prosthetic
Because of its strong infrastructure and its 54-year history of uninterrupted medical care, US-based Hanger Prosthetics chose HAS as its site for a complete prosthetics lab, funded by its Irving Sobel Foundation. By mid-February 2010, just 6-weeks after the earthquake, they had installed and staffed a state of the art lab, providing prosthetics and physical therapy to both amputees and others who had lost limbs. After caring for all the people in the HAS district, they began to accommodate patients from Port au Prince. As of August 1, 2010, they had fitted 500 prosthetics. They have also trained local Haitians as technicians to make the prostheses.
Hospital Albert Schweitzer (Photo by Melissa Harris)
Integrated Community Outreach Services-Changing Lives
Since curing the sick is only half the battle, HAS also fights the causes of disease. In the 1960s, for example, an HAS program eradicated neonatal tetanus, which had killed hundreds of Artibonite Valley infants every year. By immunizing mothers and educating traditional birth attendants, HAS keeps the region tetanus-free. HAS attacks the causes of malnutrition, malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS with equal energy. Community health centers and dispensaries bring hospital services to outlying areas, a decentralized volunteer network monitors local health, and a continuous census tracks treatment effectiveness.
Community Development-Building Lives
Health has no sharp boundaries: malnutrition will persist without reliable food supplies; disease will persist without sanitation; powerlessness will persist without literacy. That reasoning led HAS to expand its mission beyond medicine alone, into the world where the Haitian people live. By helping to change those lives, HAS hopes to foster not only health, but self-reliance. Since Larry Mellon first put down his stethoscope and picked up his transit, HAS has been deeply involved in improving water and land use, agriculture, literacy, reforestation and financial opportunities in the Artibonite Valley. For more information about HAS’ efforts towards reforestation, please visit http://www.friendsofhas.org/projects/htrip.php3
Community Malnutrition Management Program
HAS is establishing eight ambulatory treatment centers in zones with the highest rates of malnutrition. The treatment centers will provide outpatient care to children with severe malnutrition, treating children as close to their homes as possible and preventing future cases as it focuses on women’s health, nutrition during pregnancy, and the different phases of infant and young child feeding.
When HAS first opened its doors in 1956, it addressed the acute care needs of the residents of the Artibonite Valley. As was common in those times, HAS built a hospital and later began prevention of the common diseases through immunizations and community-based care. Starting in January 2010, with the devastating earthquake in Port au Prince, HAS expanded its role to support a national emergency, as the need for acute emergency care wound down, HAS, in collaboration with Hangar Prosthetics, established a prosthetic service for amputees. Less than a year later, HAS was called upon to service the large number of people in its region who were affected by cholera, which returned with a vengeance in the spring of 2011.
As it has throughout its history, HAS responded to these needs energetically, creatively, and with its traditional dedication.
For more information about HAS, please visit their website at www.hashaiti.org.
