Haiti Rehabilitation Centre

Our rehabilitation service continues to take in new patients with spinal injuries and stroke impairments. Outpatient rehabilitation care provides assessment, physiotherapy and exercise for children and adults. Sadly many of the patients are receiving remedial care for conditions that should have been corrected in the early years of their lives; for example Amable, a 10 year old girl who has clubbed feet, had learned to walk on her ankles and is now receiving some basic physiotherapy to help her and her mother strengthen her lower leg muscles.

Over the last few months the construction has been developing rapidly, our new purpose built rehabilitation centre is now completed providing the perfect setting for our rehab patients.  It will  provide a unique and life transforming service for the country, recently highlighted in a report about our work by Dr Fritz Moise, one of Haiti’s leading SCI specialists: ‘The opening of the HHA centre of SCI was without any doubt a turning point in the destiny of the northern population of the country, especially in the life of those suffering from disabilities such as SCI.  The feedback is positive and the statistics show the growing numbers of consults and the waiting list for new admissions in the inpatient unit.’

In addition we have started to launch our mobile rehabilitation team that provides support to patients in their houses. The team connects discharged individuals with community leaders and groups so they can be fully integrated within their communities and access the support they require. The team can also reach some of the most vulnerable, housebound patients, ensuring everyone is offered the opportunities they deserve.  

We are also developing sports therapy for the rehabilitation patients with the provision of basic equipment javelins, discus, shot puts and a sophisticated three-wheel hand cycle. These activities are highly motivational and provide both great physical and mental development elements to treatment at a relatively low cost.

In relation to this rehabilitation project, we have launched a campaign for Haiti, “The Dream”, to be able to send a team of athletes to the London 2012 Paralympic games (http://www.haitidream.org/).  The campaign would allow Haiti, a country with the highest rate of disability in the Americas, to be represented for the first time at a world event, raising the awareness of the lack of facilities and opportunities for the disabled in that country.  We formally registered four of patients for the Parapan American Games in Mexico this November (one of the qualifiers for London 2012) with the Haitian Paralympic Committee.  We have welcomed onto the HHA team a full time voluntary disability sports coordinator who’s going to be helping out with all this side of the work!  This isn’t a one off campaign!  We want it to leave a lasting legacy to provide the platform for future Haitian Paralympians to develop.

If you'd like to continue supporting this urgent work, please contact us today or make a donation via GlobalGiving. It's only thanks to you that such positive change is being made!  Thanks again, and please keep up the great support.

Links:

• For more information about the project
• If you’d like to find out more about ‘The Dream’ campaign

Brilliant progress continues with the expansion of facilities and services at the Rehabilitation Centre where we are one of the only centers in Haiti proving rehabilitation and essential health care to those people suffering from spinal cord injuries, and other significant disabilities following severe medical events like a stroke.

In May we also undertook an audacious Solar Power project which will transform our energy bills and will allow the hospital to develop into a more self-sustainable way.  This new development will allow us to have cheaper and more reliable electricity which will be a huge boost to us, saving monthly revenue costs, supporting a more environmentally friendly approach to our work, and ensuring a more constant supply of power.  The Hospital is now running on Solar power for 80% of the time. Solar power has also been installed at the children's home and the volunteer village. 

At the beginning of May HHA teamed up with Ambassadors in Sport and arranged several days of sporting activities for individuals with disabilities in North Haiti, including a historic amputee football match, the first of it's kind in Cap-Haitien with the Haitian National Amputee football team.  Find out more here...http://haitihospitalappeal.org/news/2011/05/historic-amputee-football-match/  This coincided with the dream we have to send 6 Haitian representatives to the Paralympics next year for London 2012…the planning has already begun!

Yet, despite so much positive news, there is also great need in Haiti.

Dr Toussaint, Our Medical Director who works tirelessly, shared the story of how he’d found one of our newest Spinal Chord patients at a different  hospital in Haiti. She’d been told by the staff at that hospital that they couldn’t provide the care she needed, and that she should travel to the Dominican Republic.  Being paralyzed (from the neck down) this was as almost impossible task.  However she somehow found her way across the border, only to find that she was unable to receive any health care in the Dominican due to the high costs, and returned to the original Haitian hospital. Again, unable to find the care she needed, she slumped upon a wooden bench within a waiting area, and that’s where she remained for some time, as if accepting a fate that was well beyond her control. The above happened over a month, in which time due to her paralysis she developed huge infected pressure wounds, leaving her future resting in a very fragile balance. HHA heard about her and she was transferred to our Rehabilitation hospital immediately. 

Despite people fearing that she would probably not survive, she's making a wonderful recovery, is even sitting up, with her wound healing, and has been out of the ward for the first few times in the last week!

Her story is just one of many, highlighting what a difference you're making.  If you'd like to find out more, please take two minutes to watch our latest video and see some of the great work you've helped achieve!  

Links:

• A new film worth watching!