Record Details:

Medicine for Peace (MFP)

Main/General Business Number: US 202-362-9121
Website: http://www.medicineforpeace.org/haiti.htm


Mission: from website:

About Medicine for Peace
The roots of Medicine For Peace were planted during the El Salvadoran Civil War when a group of concerned American physicians supplied medicine to clinics in villages devasted by the war.Since that time, we have been steadfast in our mission - to provide medical care and humanitarian assistance to children who are victims of war.


Medicine For Peace has undergone remarkable growth in the past ten years; we have helped children in El Salvador, Bosnia, Iraq, Haiti and the USA. Yet, the essential character of the organization has not changed. We remain a voluntary organization in which doctors, nurses, engineers, and dedicated individuals selflessly donate time, energy and resources to achieve our common goals.


Our financial support is primarily from individual donors and from small foundations, who take pride in seeing every dollar channeled into child health programs with minimal overhead. Our Executive Committee has the freedom to tackle difficult and often dangerous child health problems. We are a small medical relief organization, but we are bold and often work in areas that larger organizations find difficult to negotiate.

The photos on our website will give you an idea of the breadth of our programs and what courageous and expert volunteers can accomplish when they have the support of generous and compassionate donors. We have joined together to achieve much in the past decade, and with your help we shall provide many more children with hope for a life free from the violence of war.





This organization provides Temporary or Permanent Service? Temporary

Notes:

MFP Responds to the Disastrous Earthquake in Haiti
MFP has been working in the mountainous Northwest region of Haiti for nearly ten years. The small Caribbean country suffered a disastrous earthquake on Tuesday, January 13, the worst the area has seen in a century. The earthquake is a cruel blow to a nation that has struggled to free itself from the constraints of poverty and political unrest. Medicine for Peace works directly in the town of Gros Morne, located 65 miles north of the capital city, Port-au-Prince.

Our co-workers are all, thankfully, unharmed by Tuesday’s catastrophe. Although buildings have been destroyed and some people have sustained injuries, no deaths have yet to be reported in town. The report from Port-au-Prince, however, gives little to rejoice about. As the death tolls rise, aid and international support are vital for Haiti to emerge from the devastation.

Medicine for Peace, with its years of experience in Haiti, is determined to do all we can, with our partners on the ground, to care for the victims of the earthquake. As a small organization, we keep in mind the Haitian saying: Piti, piti, wazo fe nich li. Little by little the bird builds its nest. Help Haiti rebuild itself from this devastating event. Please continue your support of our efforts and make it possible for MFP to bring relief to the people of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas

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The Situation in Gros-Morne

The town of Gros-Morne is 175 kilometers north of Port-au-Prince in the northern Artibonite province. Twenty-seven thousand people live in the town and an additional 100,000 people live in the eight surrounding districts. As in other parts of rural Haiti, there is no public water, sewerage facilities, electricity or reliable way to communicate with the rest of the country. Dirt roads, to and from the town are in poor condition, and are impassable in the rainy season.

There is a regional hospital in Gros-Morne (the Alma Mater Hospital), that consists of five small, single-story, cinder block buildings with open windows and tin roofs. The local Catholic Church operates the hospital as well as a clinic (dispensaire) in each of the eight districts. Two part-time physicians and a small number of poorly trained community health aides attend to the 127,000 inhabitants of greater Gros-Morne.

The MFP Health Initiative

MFP is in the early stages of planning a comprehensive assitance program to Gros-Morne. We are working with the local Catholic Church, The Alma Mater Hospital and community leaders to address the following health issues.

A safe and abundant water supply. The single improvement that would have the greatest impact on the social and medical crisis in Gros-Morne would be a an abundant and readily accessible, potable water supply. A recent MFP water and sanitation survey found that each person used 9.5 liters of water per day, considerably lower than the minimum World Health Organization standard for emergency situations (e.g. refugee camps). More ominous, 41% of all water consumed was drawn from the local river which is contaminated by human and domestic animal excrement.

A health monitoring system for Gros- Morne. The first step in designing a comprehensive health plan for Gros-Morne will be the initiation of a system to monitor important health indicators (e.g.childhoodhood morbidity and mortality, vaccination rates, infectious disease incidence rates, malnutrition rates, birth and maternal mortality rates, pre-natal clinic visits and HIV infection rates.

A hospital based clinical laboratory and radiology facility. The two year plan includes fundraising to support the construction of a diagnostic radiological facility and the development of a state-of -the art clinical laboratory, including the training of laboratory personnel.

Community health education. The backbone of the community health system are the community heath workers and the nurses who supervise them. MFP has organized a series of intensive courses using experts from Haiti and the United States to improve the health care delivered by the community health workers. Workshops in emergency medicine, midwifery, psychiatric problems and dermatology are planned.

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BLOG
http://medicineforpeace.blogspot.com/

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