A young boy receives an oral polio vaccination at a USAID/OFDA-funded International Medical Corps clinic at Petionville golf club on July 13, 2010, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Photo by Kendra Helmer/USAID
Submitted by Sara Lockwood
We’d like to conclude our project spotlight series this week by highlighting the positive change that a USAID supported clinic run by the International Medical Corps has brought to one Haitian community. Our colleagues on the ground report that the clinic, located in Bolosse, is always filled with school children. The clinic was created almost immediately after the earthquake to serve the four spontaneous settlements that now surround it, and offers medical and psychosocial care targeted to children attending the recently reopened school next door.
Here’s what Patrick Paillant, the principal at the school near the clinic, has to say about the program:
I have identified eight children suffering from mental problems [as a result of the earthquake]. There could be more. Some of the children might be too young for these problems to fully manifest . . . This clinic is really good. Before [the earthquake], when a child had a problem, we would have to find the resources to take care of it. Now we don’t have to.
The grandmother of Francesca, a six-year old girl who has received care at the clinic, had this to add:
The clinic here has done a very good job. They are seeing many, many patients.
Clinics such as these are critically important in helping Haitian children process everything they’ve experienced and all that they’ve lost over the last six months. The care given at these clinics will go a very long way towards allowing these Haitian children to focus in school and continue believing in a better future for their country.
Rebuilding Haiti isn’t just about blueprints, bricks, and mortar. It’s about helping Haitians—large and small–to rebuild their own lives despite the incredible challenges that they face.
