Update on Haiti
April 15, 2010

IPPF’s Haitian Member Association, PROFAMIL has set up semi-permanent field clinics within tent cities around and outside of Port-au-Prince and in Jacmel, while Mobile Health Units continue to service various communities. PROFAMIL currently sees anywhere from 60 to 100 people per day at its tent sites. This number depends largely on the available supplies on a given day. PROFAMIL has added a full time psychologist to its staff in Port-au-Prince as well as a trained social worker in Jacmel, to respond to the need for psychological support for the traumas that people are facing.  More than two months after the devastating earthquake struck Haiti, we are still working closely with PROFAMIL as they develop a service delivery strategy that matches the evolving situation on the ground and builds organizational capacity and key partnerships.

Reflections on the January 12th Earthquake

“There, the air was thick with dust so I assumed several houses must have collapsed and I went to St Michel hospital, the main hospital in the South-East. It was around 6pm… I was surrounded by two dozens injured people who were crying for help. Some had fractured limbs; others were injured and covered in blood...” writes Dr. Ernest Desir, Medical Director, Jacmel Clinic, PROFAMIL, Haiti. “We were not ready for such a catastrophe; we had no knowledge, no medical supplies or personnel. Since I was the only one in front of the hospital, I asked the ambulance driver to use his megaphone to call out for doctors, nurses, auxiliaries, private or public, to come to the hospital. I started checking up and talking to the injured people. I reduced limb fractures using pieces of cardboard, wood or anything that could immobilize the fractured or deformed limb. People were screaming from every direction…” Read Dr. Desir’s full account.

As Haiti faces the earthquake aftermath, we urgently need your support to help PROFAMIL provide critical, lifesaving services.

We are acting swiftly in collaboration with PROFAMIL, our Member Association in Haiti, to help save lives by integrating family planning in emergency relief. PROFAMIL's clinics in Port-au-Prince and Jacmel have been destroyed but staff and community health promoters are organizing mobile health units to bring basic health care, obstetric care, family planning and HIV prevention services to community-based sites, including tent cities and other temporary shelters that have been set up in and around both cities.

"Ensuring the implementation of a minimal initial service package for reproductive health will save lives if integrated into the emergency response in Haiti," commented Carmen Barroso, Regional Director of IPPF/WHR. There are 750,000 women of reproductive age in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area and another 15,000 in the city of Jacmel on the southern coast. At this time, they have limited access to reproductive health services including emergency obstetric care. According to estimates from the Reproductive Health Response in Conflict Consortium, an estimated 10,000 women will need delivery services in the coming month, and as many as 1,500 women will need care for life threatening complications during delivery. In crises like this, women are often unable to access their usual methods of family planning and the risk of sexual violence and exploitation among women and girls increases dramatically.

IPPF/WHR is collaborating with key disaster relief networks and partners such as the United Nations and other NGOs, to ensure the most effective response to the enormous demands for medical services in Haiti. PROFAMILIA, IPPF's Association in the Dominican Republic has deployed mobile health units across the border to Haiti, to assess areas of need and to begin providing health services. PROFAMILIA is sending rescue units consisting of doctors, nurses, and volunteers with extensive experience working with Haitian immigrants living in the Dominican Republic. They will target their support in the areas of Leogame, Matrissals, Jacmel, Petit Goave and Grand Goave which face many unmet health demands given that most relief efforts has focused on Port-au-Prince. Additionally, a team of IPPF/WHR staff is traveling to Haiti this week to support PROFAMIL as it reestablishes services.

For more than 25 years, PROFAMIL has provided low-cost, high-quality healthcare including family planning, early detection of breast and cervical cancer, pre-and-post natal services, and voluntary testing and counseling for HIV/AIDS. Its clinics, community distribution points, and mobile health units provide hundreds of thousands of sexual and reproductive healthcare services to Haitians annually.

Donations can be made on our secure site and 100% of the money will go directly to PROFAMIL's operations, to get their clinics and mobile health units up and working as soon as possible.