Categorized | Community

Update on Partners in Health

Posted on 15 January 2010 by Tom Kertes

The New York Times has an op-ed on Partners in Health, a human rights organization working with people in Haiti to support the development of the country’s health care sector.  Earlier in the week my good friends of the Coalition of the Immokalee Workers sent out an email with information about the organization’s commitment to providing supports for effective and community-based development of infrastructure.  Visit Partners in Health for information about how to donate to the humanitarian efforts of the organization. Here is more about the organization, from the op-end:

This week, the list of things that Haiti needs, things like jobs and food and reforestation, has suddenly grown a great deal longer. The earthquake struck mainly the capital and its environs, the most densely populated part of the country, where organizations like the Red Cross and the United Nations have their headquarters. A lot of the places that could have been used for disaster relief — including the central hospital, such as it was — are now themselves disaster areas.

But there are effective aid organizations working in Haiti. At least one has not been crippled by the earthquake. Partners in Health, or in Haitian Creole Zanmi Lasante, has been the largest health care provider in rural Haiti. (I serve on this organization’s development committee.) It operates, in partnership with the Haitian Ministry of Health, some 10 hospitals and clinics, all far from the capital and all still intact. As a result of this calamity, Partners in Health probably just became the largest health care provider still standing in all Haiti.

Fortunately, it also offers a solid model for independence — a model where only a handful of Americans are involved in day-to-day operations, and Haitians run the show. Efforts like this could provide one way for Haiti, as it rebuilds, to renew the promise of its revolution. read more

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