GHESKIO Activities Update

 Care for homeless people:

  Dr. Macarthur Charles and a patient at the GHESKIO TB field hospital.

We are providing food, clean water, and primary health care to the 6,000 homeless people camped on the GHESKIO compound. Everyone now has a tent. As the rainy season approaches, we are looking to move everyone to higher ground on an open field across the street from GHESKIO. We are preparing this ground to make it a model camp with a cooking area, tents for all, good drainage, sanitation, and play area for children.

Ultimately our goal is to move everyone out of the GHESKIO camp and back into their own rebuilt homes. The faster we can get people home and back into their own communities the better. Most of the people in the GHESKIO refugee camp come from the impoversished neighborhood across the street from GHESKIO “City of God”. As we help families rebuild their homes, we plan to “build better” and improve sanitation, clean water, primary health care, and education for the entire City of God community.The GHESKIO Field hospital:We are now focusing on providing rehabilitation services to the thousands of patients who suffered severe trauma and now have disabilities. We are working with health care providers from the Caris Foundation on this. We are caring for wounds and changing dressings. We are providing antibiotics for infected wounds. We are training Haitian nurses how to provide physical and occupational therapy. They are in turn providing therapy to patients with disabilities.AIDS and tuberculosis care:We have now been in contact with ~90% of our HIV patients. We are also reaching out to other HIV centers providing them support so that HIV patients in Port au Prince do not suffer from treatment interruptions.We have opened a “tuberculosis field hospital” for patients with active tuberculosis. Our Tb laboratory is operational and is providing diagnostic services for our patients and patients at other hospitals and clinics in Port au Prince. We are working with the National TB Program to help fill the gap left when many TB treatment centers in Port au Prince were destroyed from the earthquake.Rebuilding:Engineers estimate that approximately half of our clinic buildings have been destroyed. At present, we are providing much care out in open air clinics. As the rainy season approaches, this will not be possible. Therefore, we are racing to repair essential facilities so that we can maintain patient care.