By Dennis Sadowski Catholic News Service
PETITE-RIVIERE-DE-NIPPES, Haiti (CNS) -- Beyond a few hospitals, quality health care facilities in Haiti are scarce. It's the clinics -- some big, some small -- that provide the bulk of health care Haitians receive.
One such clinic is located 70 miles west of the capital, Port-au-Prince, in the rural community of Petite-Riviere-de-Nippes. The three-year-old Visitation Clinic -- a project of the Visitation Hospital Foundation in Nashville, Tenn. -- sees about 70 patients a day. Most have common illnesses -- gastro-intestinal ailments, urinary tract infections or a slight infection, all typically caused by ingesting contaminated water.
In a country where access to health care is limited, having a clinic nearby can mean the difference between a mild illness or something more serious.
Many patients are children whose parents are glad the clinic opened in their seafront town because it saves them from making the 45-minute, 10-mile trip over sometimes rocky unpaved roads to St. Therese Hospital in Miragoane.
Dr. Rony Jean-Francois has worked at the clinic since it opened in 2008. He left a hospital in Port-au-Prince to work among people who have few other alternatives for care.
"I'm proud of my work because I'm giving service. It's a gift to be part of it. I can bring my competence to a community that is by itself without help," the 43-year-old physician said.
Since January, the clinic has housed a cholera treatment unit on its grounds. At the peak of the epidemic in December and January, the unit's 30 beds were nearly full for days on end.
Jean-Francois and the clinic's administrator, Riphard "Killy" Serent, made the rounds to the 30,000 residents in town and the surrounding rural area for weeks, talking about cholera prevention techniques: proper hygiene, including regular hand washing, and drinking only safe water. Serent said the effort likely prevented the clinic from being overwhelmed with cholera cases.
Through April 19, more than 200 people had been treated at the clinic and in the special unit opened by Doctors of the World, a French medical aid agency, on the clinic grounds.
Haiti's health care system was severely tested with the cholera outbreak. Through April 12, Haiti's Ministry of Health and Population reported more than 283,000 cholera cases with more than 4,800 deaths.
Until October, Haiti had not seen a reported case of cholera for 50 years. The disease unexpectedly reappeared in rural Artibonite department in the center of the country, and the strain was traced to South Asia.
At Visitation Clinic, while cholera was not as serious a challenge as elsewhere, Jean-Francois and Serent still face daily challenges because of the deep poverty in which people live. Most patients arrive on foot, some leaving home before dawn so that they arrive for the clinic's early morning opening.
Numerous patients over two days said they found the staff helped them feel respected and comfortable.
That falls in line with the clinic's mission to provide "competent and compassionate health care."
Jean-Francois sees the clinic's work simply.
"The foundation of the clinic is love," he said. "Everybody is involved in it."
