GHESKIO's New Treatment Centers

Construction is complete on GHESKIO's new Tuberculosis Hospital and Cholera Treatment Center. The opening of these two facilities is highlighted in a recent New York Times piece.  

As a consequence of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, estimates of the tuberculosis (TB) incidence in Port-au-Prince doubled and an outbreak of MDR-TB ensued.  The earthquake destroyed the 3 major TB sanatoria in the Port-au-Prince area,  and most out-patient treatment centers.  The Haitian National TB Program estimates that at least 3,000 TB patients in Port-au-Prince stopped their medications and dispersed to crowded refugee camps, where TB transmission accelerated in poorly ventilated and crowded tents.   In response to the desperate need, and with generous funding from Becton Dickinson Company, GHESKIO has constructed a 35-bed TB hospital to treat patients.  

The first report of clinical cholera in Haiti occurred on October 19, 2010, only 10 months after the earthquake.  Following its emergence in the Artibonite Valley in central Haiti, infections spread to all 10 Departments of Haiti within 100 days, and by December 2012 there were 629,300 cases and 7,824 deaths - the largest cholera epidemic in recent history.

Immediately following the outbreak, GHESKIO established an emergency temporary cholera treatment center in Port-au-Prince and launched a comprehensive cholera program in City of God, an adjacent impoverished slum including provision of chlorinated water, building latrines, and establishing re-hydration posts.  Community health workers were trained to canvas the local slums and refer patients to GHESKIO for treatment.  These patients will now be treated in the new permamnent Cholera Treatment Center.