NOVA Hope for Haiti is sending our 12th medical mission to Haiti May 5-13, 2012.

In partnership with the Church of the Presentation in Upper Saddle River, NJ, we are sending a team of 24 doctors, nurses, translators and support volunteers to open an emergency care clinic for 7 days in Cavaillon, Haiti.

The core of the team is in place and the volunteers are already getting excited.  We are still recruiting doctors, nurses and translators to join us and the spots are filling up very quickly.

Our medicines are being ordered and shipped to Haiti from IDA and logistics are being worked on.  We are all very excited about this mission as it is the 10th anniversary of us working in Haiti.

In addition to getting the clinic organized, ordering medicines, purchasing plane tickets, making travel arrangements for a team of 24 people in Haiti and everything else that goes into organizing a major medical mission, the team is also responsible for raising the $12,000.00 of the $22,000.00 needed for expenses for this mission.  This does not include airfare which the volunteers pay for themselves.

$10,000.00 of the $22,000.00 is being generously donated by the Church of the Presentation in Upper Saddle River, NJ.

We need your help to make this mission possible.  All money donated toward the upcoming medical mission will go directly to purchase medicine, supplies, and ground expenses for the team.  Please help us provide medical care to men, women and children who have none in a country that has suffered much.

A $500.00 donation will pay for all the expenses of a medical mission volunteer to provide medical care, including medicines, for the week we are in Haiti.  Can you help?  Any amount will be great appreciated!

DONATE NOW HERE.

Patient and Practitioner, the long walk back home

This four-year old little girl was carried on her frail mother’s shoulders some five miles through the countryside from the pounded earth floor of their thatched mountainside hut to NOVA’s 11th medical mission this past April 2011.  Word spreads fast in Haïti and this child had been ill with recurring respiratory distress.  Shortness of breath and air hunger are anguishing symptoms, especially for a child who does not understand.  She was treated with inhalation therapy and antibiotics.  Fortunately, Libby Barrett had volunteered for this trip, a registered nurse and pulmonary specialist from Saint Vincent’s Hospital in New York City where she had worked for years with cystic fibrosis patients and their lung complications.  She spent the entire afternoon cupping and clapping this child’s chest to clear inspissated secretions. When the clinic closed at sunset, there was no alternative for child and mother other than to return home.  We drove them part of the way but their hut was inaccessible for a long distance by anything but foot paths and several helped them with this long hike back home.  Arrangements were made for follow up care at the NOVA clinic the next day.  Although she showed signs of improvement, this child was in trouble and we were a day away from packing up the NOVA clinic for six months.  We provided funds for the child to be seen at a hospital facility an hour away but we returned to the States with misgivings.   NOVA maintains active records in the States of the very sick that were evaluated on these trips and we try to intervene when we can from a distance.  Sadly, our follow up phone calls revealed that this four-year old girl had perished at the hospital facility to which we had referred her.

Would this child have survived had NOVA’s permanent medical facility been in place and functioning under the care of its permanent staff?  No one can say.  What is clear is that tragedies like this one underscore the need for a permanent NOVA facility . . . and the quicker the better.  With sophisticated medicines procured at less-than-cost prices through the auspices of the IDA Foundation in Amsterdam, Holland, and the commitment of dedicated and concerned professional volunteers applying the the principles of  modern up-to-date treatment, the chances of survivorship in heart rending cases like these will be greatly enhanced.  This sad case has been a clarion call for us all to join hands with renewed vigor and establish NOVA’s permanent clinic by year’s end.

Will you help us accomplish this?

Right now NOVA has a team of doctors, nurses and others working on designing a mother – child program in Cavaillon.  The program would run all year and make a profound difference in the health and well being of the families in the community.  Our team is working on designing a program that would provide basic, ongoing care, from pregnancy to age five.  Pregnant women would receive vitamins and iron, and regular check ups.  The children would receive regular examinations, have charts, receive vaccinations and have access to a doctor and medicine when they are ill.

We are currently searching for a facility that can be used as a clinic in Cavaillon until our permanent medical and volunteer facility is built. NOVA is seeking to rent a building in town that can be retrofitted for this purpose, or possibly build a small, simple structure on our property that will be used until we raise the funds for our large structure.

We will be seeking to hire a local, Haitian doctor, a local nurse and possibly an administrator to run the program.

Our goal is to have this program up and running early in 2012.

Images by Tony Savino, 2010

Images by Tony Savino, 2010

We had clearly defined criteria in choosing a home base for our mission in Haiti.  We sought a community that:

1) had no medical care available to the population

2) would offer the possibility to grow from a bi-annual medical mission to a permanent medical outreach

3) was relatively easily accessible to highways for transporting volunteers and supplies

4) was also accessible to people in the outlying mountain regions where the population tends to be even poorer and have access to less services

Cavaillon met all of these criteria.

Cavaillon is a French colonial town in the south west of Haiti.  The church in the town center dates back to the 1700′s and in the main square is buried a hero of the Haitian revolution which ended in 1804.  The town is located right near Highway 2 which connects Port au Prince and the city of Les Cayes as well as many towns and villages along the way.  Cavaillon is about a 5 hour drive from the capital and a 40 minute drive from Les Cayes which is served by a regional airport.

The town center is relatively small, with a few paved roads around it’s picturesque french colonial town center.  However, Cavaillon is the center for a large population of rural farmers who live on dirt roads climbing hours up the mountains around the town.  The people making up this rural population are among the poorest people in the western hemisphere.

The town hosts a bi-weekly market on Wednesdays and Saturdays which is very crowded and everything from live stock, to school books, to fresh fruit, rice, beans, salt, and clothes are sold.  The market is attended by people from other nearby villages and towns, and also by many, many people from the mountains who make the trip to sell their agricultural goods and to buy household items.  Because of this market many of the people from the distant mountain communities have been served by NOVA’s bi-annual clinics and will be served by our permanent medical facility.

Cavaillon has become a home away from home for many of our regular volunteers who have been visiting the town since 2004.

For more images of Cavaillon see a gallery of photos of the town and people here.

The bins are packed with supplies, the texts, emails, and phone calls are flying between team members in New York, New Jersey, Miami and Port au Prince. The team is exited. The vehicles are rented, the medicines are in Port au Prince (athough some are stills stuck in customs, yet again… par for the course!) and the Aldy Hotel is waiting for our arrival.
Tomorrow we will fly to Port au Prince, retrieve our supplies in the madhouse that is the new temporary airport, fight our way through an army of redcaps, to load up our truck, and board our busses for the 5 hour drive to Aquin.

Then on Sunday, we will get a nice early start. For those team members who want to go to Church we will try to make it to Mass in Cavaillon, and then we’ll be off to the community center behind Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church which we will tranform into a top notch clinic. Sheets will hang to create examination rooms, the stage will serve as the pharmacy, chairs will be staged for waiting patients, our paperwork will be organized at check in, and we will be ready to open our doors for the hundreds of waiting patients who will inevitably appear Monday morning. We hope to see about 1,500 patients again this coming week.

The days will be hot and long, but the comradery in the evenings refreshes our tireless volunteers and helps them get ready for the next hot day of great work.
To all of our donors who make these missions possible: you are part of this team, you are providing medical care where there is none, and I thank you.
And to all friends of NOVA Hope for Haiti, please keep our team in your prayers as we travel to Haiti this week, and the people of Haiti also, who continue to struggle against incredibly poverty.

Thank you,
-Joe

But the lives that were lost cannot be recovered. The lost we remember and commend to God who alone can overcome the destruction of death.

It’s tempting on a day like today to want to throw in the towel and declare Haiti a lost cause. But it took great strength and resilience to just survive these past 12 months and the people of Haiti have again displayed that fortitude. Yet they still need our help. At NOVA we are not giving up and we are not throwing in the towel. Haiti has a long and proud history and we remain committed to our mission to help our friends in Haiti with much needed medical care. We thank our volunteers, our financial supporters and our friends for all of the encouragement and support you have given over the last 7 years. We thank you for not giving up either.

This past year was a tough year for our friends in Haiti. Almost a year ago, a devestating earthquake claimed over a quarter of a million lives in Port au Prince, Jacmel, Leogane and other towns in the area. The capital is in ruins and is having a difficult time recovering and will for a long time to come. Then the recent outbreak of Cholera added another unwelcome menace that is claiming the lives thousands of people, especially children and the elderly. The bad news is rampant.

But there is also good news. NOVA sent it’s 10th volunteer medical mission and the largest volunteer team of doctors and nurses to date. We treated well over 1,000 patients and are right now planning another medical mission in March 2011. We also brought one of our patients, four year old Danson, to the US for heart surgery to fix a fatal congenetal heart defect. The surgery went well and he is on his way to healing and health.

The building project continues to move foward and the Board of Directors is very hopeful to see much work come to fruition in 2011.

So as we bid 2010 farewell, with all of it’s sadness, loss, and struggles, we also look forward to 2011 with hope that together we can make the future a little brighter.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of NOVA Hope for Haiti, I wish you all very Happy Holidays filled with joy, love and peace.

Sincerely,

Joseph Nuzzi
Vice-President
NOVA Hope for Haiti