Building Back Better in Haiti
Three-Month Progress Report
In response to the devastation following the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that ravaged Haiti on January 12, 2010, Partners In Health (PIH) and its sister organization, Zanmi Lasante (ZL), with 4,403 local staff and a large network of public hospitals and health centers, immediately began delivering treatment and care to earthquake survivors in Port-au-Prince and across the Central and Artibonite Departments.
The long-term ramifications of this disaster will be significant and far-reaching. To address them, PIH/ZL has taken on relief, recovery, and rebuilding activities in three core areas: clinical services, social and economic support services, and health systems strengthening. This report outlines PIH/ZL's activities in these program areas from January 12 through April 12, 2010.
Highlights include:
- In the first month after the earthquake, PIH/ZL emergency medical efforts treated 4,961 critically injured patients through facility-based interventions, set up, stocked, and staffed 25 operating rooms, identified roughly 1,000 additional patients and referred them to collaborating medical relief organizations, and evacuated 140 patients to the USNS Comfort and hospitals abroad.
- PIH/ZL established clinics in four settlement sites to serve the basic healthcare needs of 88,000 displaced people in Port-au-Prince. Since January 25, these four clinics have treated more than 50,000 patients.
- During the first three months, PIH/ZL hired 358 additional local staff, shipped more than 422 tons of medicines, supplies and equipment, and deployed 516 clinical and technical volunteers.
- PIH/ZL has already supported more than 10,000 people and their families with social or economic support in the form of cash, food, agriculture assistance, educational support, jobs, or other services over the course of the past three months.
- Bolstered capacity at our 12 clinical sites in the Central Plateau and Artibonite to meet the needs of both thousands of injured survivors and tens of thousands of displaced people, who are in need of basic health services.
PIH/ZL approaches "building back better" in Haiti with the same values and principles that have guided our work for many years, namely: partnership with the Government of Haiti to achieve sustainable, longterm improvements to the country's public health system; pragmatic solidarity with the Haitian people to address their basic needs; and a comprehensive approach to help lift communities out of poverty.
