Health - Haiti Observer Blog

Marie-Louise Jean-Baptiste, MD and Cambridge Health Alliance physician, was awarded with Charles McCabe Faculty Prize (2013) of Harvard Medical School. She received the award at Daniel D. Federman Teaching Awards Celebration that was held at Harvard Medical School's TMEC Walter Amphitheatre on Monday, 6th of May, 2013. The Charles McCabe Faculty Prize has been awarded to the most outstanding teachers of Harvard Medical School since 1982. The honor is given to a highly selected group of best medical educators of the school.

Marie-Louise Jean-Baptiste was honored with this prize because of outstanding teaching performance in primary care clerkship of Cambridge Health Alliance and its Cambridge Integrated Clerkship or CIC of Harvard Medical School. CIC was launched in 2004 and it is the medical school's principal medical year's complete redesign. The CIC is considered to be a national and international model for reforms in clinical education.

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Following the warning from the Ministry of Public Health and Population in the Dominican Republic regarding the reappearance of avian flu (H1N1 virus) in their country, the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Haiti took its own precaution to protect the Haitian population.

Effective immediately, the Haitians government has instituted a ban. Importers and retailers of meat products, particularly poultry, eggs and live animals potentially infected or carriers of the Avian Flu from the Dominican Republic are prohibited from carrying these products until further order.

Can Haiti afford to be affected by Avian Flu? As we are currently dealing with the Cholera epidemic inherited from the Nepalese contingent of UN peacekeeping MINUSTAH, Haiti is faced with a new health threat.

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Life expectancy is defined as the average number of years a group of people live who are born in same year assuming that future mortality at each year stays constant. Life Expectancy at Birth is a parameter used for measuring the quality of life in a country.

The population of Haiti surged significantly after 1900 but the life expectancy in Haiti is one of the lowest in entire world. Infant mortality and birth rate are very high in Haiti. There are several reasons which drive the life expectancy rate in Haiti. The Republic of Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. The country is plagued by poor nutrition and healthcare services in the country are inadequate. According to the World Food Programme of United Nations, over 80% of Haitian population live below the poverty line. As a result, malnutrition is a big problem in Haiti and around 50% of the Haitian children have been found to be undersized. According to statistics, less than 50% of Haitians can access clean and safe drinking water.

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Haiti, which suffered a crushing and debilitating earthquake in 2010, needs health-care workers, particularly in maternal and neo-natal care. Statistics reveal mothers during child-birth and neonates suffer 50 times the rate of child-birth mortalities than women in the U.S. Haitian women experience difficult pregnancies with dangerous blood-pressure levels, anemia, and sometimes cholera.

U.S mid-wives have arrived on a mission to bring down the death toll. And what they have found is distressing. The ratio of mid-wives to maternity patients is two for every 33 in labor. Mid-wives often work 24-hour shifts, sometimes for a week. Exhausted, they fall asleep, abandoning their charges. Women, who have already delivered, die from hemorrhaging that does not receive attention because of mid-wives' sleep deprivation. And during early hours of the morning they fear for their security, vulnerable to rapists. As a result they leave their patients alone.

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Religious Origins.

Haiti culture is informed by multi-cultural influences. Religious traditions are grounded in Voodoo and Roman Catholicism. The melding of these two different belief systems arose when Voodoo was imported by African Congolese slaves. It soon became cross-bred with French and Spanish settlers' Christian practices.

Music Origins

Haiti's musical traditions have derived from Voodoo, Afro-Cuban, and Creole jazz-roots genres.

Food Origins

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Dr. Florence Guillaume Duperval, Haiti's Minister of Public Health and Population (MPHP), recently received an honorary award from the Kennedy School of Government. She has been chosen as a 2013 Harvard Health Leader. The recognition is seen as an acknowledgement of her creativity in carrying out her duties as MPHP.

The Harvard School of Public Health's Advisory-Board Chairman, Dean Julio Frenck, notified Dr. Duperval in a congratulatory letter of her selection. He wrote Dr. Florence Duperval had been given the honor because of her strong and effective initiatives in administering to Haiti's poorer communities. He extended the Kennedy School of Government's invitation to join the Harvard Ministerial Health Leaders' Forum (HMHLF) in June 2013, its second annual gathering.

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Cholera has been Haiti's worst health problem for the past few years. From 2010 to the present, there has been a series of outbreaks of this contagious, deadly disease, claiming the lives of about 8,000 Haitians and hospitalizing thousands of men, women, and children. With the country's health care insufficient for its people and in poor conditions and without immediate action, the outbreak could get worse in the next few years to come.

To address Haiti's cholera and health care problem, the United Nations, who has been very active in helping out the country since the 2010 earthquake, delegated the Doctor Paul Farmer from the United States as the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon's special advisor for Community Based Medicine and Lessons on Haiti last December. Several of Farmer's duties are to assist in building support for the fight against cholera in the country and give advice and education on the different medical techniques and alternatives that could be utilized and applied in Haiti and other affected places.

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There is no stopping Haiti's town of Mirebalais from developing into a significant municipality in the Mirebalais Arrondissement. The town is currently seeing various developmental projects that can surely improve the lives of the 165,000 people living there. The Arrondisement capital, which is only 30 miles and a 45-minute drive from Port-au-Prince, has become a place for people seeking a less populated town with many employment opportunities. With the developmental projects launched in the town, people are able to get jobs.

One of things that Mirebalais is proud of is the establishment of a modern teaching hospital, which is expected to be completed next year. It can be recalled that in 2010, non-government organizations Partners in Health and Zanmi Lasante rolled out a plan to build a state-of-the-art community hospital in the town. The construction, however, was hampered by the 2010 earthquake. Construction resumed and will likely finish in 2013. The Mirebalais National Teaching Hospital, the first of its kind, will be able accommodate about 320 in-patients. It will also feature training facilities for medical students, nurses and physicians. This is a good thing as Haiti is in need of more medical professionals in order to enhance health services.

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The best way to ensure employee satisfaction is through giving the benefits that every hard-working employee deserves. The success and failure of a business or institution always relies on whether the people who work are happy, as this equates to work productivity. In a country of limited healthcare, Haiti's workers are in need of sufficient health programs from the government and the companies they work for.

In line with the Yuletide season, Haiti's Post Office announced earlier this month that it will be providing all its employees with the health program of the Office of Workers' Compensation Insurance, Sickness, and Maternity (OFATMA). This is in line with the initiative of the Post Office's Director General Regine Godefroy. The health program, which will be effective starting January 2013, will provide employees of the institution, both working in the cities and towns, with sufficient health care benefits and social protection for them and their families. The funding of OFATMA will be shouldered by the institution.

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Floods can cause mold in your home and it can be a big problem for you and your family. Keep in mind that mold is bad for the health. Those who have allergies and asthma will be put at greater risk if mold in your house is not removed immediately.

Health officials called on people whose homes were submerged in water to remove the mold in their properties. One can do this by cleaning every inch of the house, drying it out, and throwing away things that are infected by mold. It might be difficult for you to discard mold-infected items, especially of they are very personal and important to you, but it might be your only way of getting rid of the entire mold. Remember that mold and mildew usually grows in just a day. Moreover, they can stick to different parts of your home.

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