Make a donation
If you would like to be a part of making the new medical/dental clinic a reality at Espwa, you can do so several ways: Donate at FPC's secure server, indicating S.O.S. for Haiti in the “notes” field. If you have trouble using the server, contact Jo Ann Bondurant at jbondurant@fpcgreensboro.org.
Or, you can send a check payable to FPC and write S.O.S. for Haiti on the memo line. Mail it to 617 N. Elm St., Greensboro, NC 27401.
By Drew Jones, MD
With less than 400 square feet of floor space, one intermittently functioning sink, and a waiting area frequented by chickens, Klinik Espwa is responsible for the health care of nearly a thousand children who populate an area with the highest rate of childhood mortality and infectious disease in the Western hemisphere.
The primary goal of the clinic is to provide basic medical services to the children who reside at the Espwa orphanage and the students of Espwa’s school in Les Cayes, Haiti.
Along with housing, food, and education, health care is one of the fundamental elements that Espwa provides its children. Appropriate health care for these children includes primary preventive 
measures such as vaccination and screening for high-incidence diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV, scabies and malaria, as well as providing care for both acute and chronic illnesses.
These children, who have the greatest need for these services, have the fewest resources to obtain them. In the best circumstances, providing quality health care can be challenging; in rural Haiti it is nearly a fantasy.
Thanks to generous donations of time, money, equipment and pharmaceuticals, health-care needs are being met on a very basic level at Espwa, but this is a fragile coalition of factors that may not be sustainable much into the future. Those of us who have been involved in the medical element of Espwa see a new clinic as a foundation from which a more effective medical system can evolve.
The vision is for a medical system led by local physicians and nurses who can provide cost-effective primary health-care services to the children of Espwa, as well as the surrounding communities. It would also serve as a public health center which would be the base of operations for local public health initiatives that seek to stem the flood of poverty-related illnesses that plague the general populace.
A mandatory seed to promote the evolution of this plan is an adequate clinic facility. Support has been swelling for a new medical building for some time, and recent demands have illuminated the inadequacy of the current clinic. Visiting medical teams must limit the scope of their activities due to the lack of proper facilities. There is no capacity to monitor a sick child overnight, requiring some cases to be referred to the city hospital, which drains financial resources from Espwa.
Currently, many types of medicine and vaccines cannot be stored properly on the clinic premises, leading to waste. Minor surgery, dental and X-ray procedures must be outsourced at great expense. Perhaps the greatest loss from not having an adequate clinic facility is that Haitian physicians are not attracted to service in such an environment.
A new clinic can rectify all these deficiencies and provide a platform from which broader health care endeavors can evolve.
To learn more about Project Hope, Espwa, and the Restavek children go to www.freethekids.org. You can also read more about S.O.S. for Haiti on Susan’s blog at www.sosforhaiti.blogspot.com.
