2007.02.04: February 4, 2007: Headlines: COS - Haiti: COS - Nigeria: NGO's: Medicine: Service: Portland Press Herald: Nigeria Staff Physician Dr. J. Michael Taylor, co- founded Konbit Sante which means "coming together for health" in Haitian Creole
Peace Corps Online:
Directory:
Haiti:
Peace Corps Haiti :
The Peace Corps in Haiti:
2007.02.04: February 4, 2007: Headlines: COS - Haiti: COS - Nigeria: NGO's: Medicine: Service: Portland Press Herald: Nigeria Staff Physician Dr. J. Michael Taylor, co- founded Konbit Sante which means "coming together for health" in Haitian Creole
Nigeria Staff Physician Dr. J. Michael Taylor, co- founded Konbit Sante which means "coming together for health" in Haitian Creole
The group works specifically with a clinic and Justinian Hospital, a 250-bed teaching hospital that has no plumbing, food, fresh water or linens for the patients. Doctors and nurses have only a few random hours of electricity every day, and women arriving to deliver their babies know to first buy a "birth kit" that contains intravenous tubing, surgical clamps and other equipment the hospital may not have on hand. "There's no running water, and that's in the hospital," said Ann Lemire, an internist pediatrician at Maine Medical Center. Lemire is a Konbit Sante volunteer who makes regular trips to Justinian Hospital in Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city. "You have to shoo the chickens and the dogs out of the rooms, and the rooster is going off. I'd stand there and say 'I wish someone could see this, because they'd never believe it.' " Konbit Sante sends two containers like this one - usually packed with about $250,000 worth of medical equipment - to Haiti every year, to benefit Justinian and a nearby clinic. The latest shipment, loaded Saturday, included an array of furniture from chairs to hospital beds, surgical equipment, pipe for water systems and hospital staples such as gloves, bandages and gowns. The goods are donated by local medical groups and hospitals, the local American Red Cross, and others.
Nigeria Staff Physician Dr. J. Michael Taylor, co- founded Konbit Sante which means "coming together for health" in Haitian Creole
Mainers heed need, ship hospital goods to Haiti Medical goods part of a love-Haiti relationship ; The Portland group Konbit Sante sends two shipments a year to a clinic and a hospital.
Feb 4, 2007
Portland Press Herald
Singing a snippet of "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" and chatting among themselves, about 30 volunteers from Portland's Konbit Sante organization stood in a long line snaking out of a Portland waterfront warehouse, passing along boxes of medical equipment to load into a 40-foot container bound for Haiti.
"You can't believe the level of need," said Wendy Taylor, who co- founded Konbit Sante 10 years ago with her husband, a doctor who had served in the Peace Corps in Nigeria.
The group works specifically with a clinic and Justinian Hospital, a 250-bed teaching hospital that has no plumbing, food, fresh water or linens for the patients. Doctors and nurses have only a few random hours of electricity every day, and women arriving to deliver their babies know to first buy a "birth kit" that contains intravenous tubing, surgical clamps and other equipment the hospital may not have on hand.
"There's no running water, and that's in the hospital," said Ann Lemire, an internist pediatrician at Maine Medical Center. Lemire is a Konbit Sante volunteer who makes regular trips to Justinian Hospital in Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city. "You have to shoo the chickens and the dogs out of the rooms, and the rooster is going off. I'd stand there and say 'I wish someone could see this, because they'd never believe it.' "
Konbit Sante sends two containers like this one - usually packed with about $250,000 worth of medical equipment - to Haiti every year, to benefit Justinian and a nearby clinic. The latest shipment, loaded Saturday, included an array of furniture from chairs to hospital beds, surgical equipment, pipe for water systems and hospital staples such as gloves, bandages and gowns. The goods are donated by local medical groups and hospitals, the local American Red Cross, and others.
Taylor said members of Konbit Sante, which means "coming together for health" in Haitian Creole, decided to focus on Haiti and Cap- Haitien because that was where the need was greatest. Although there are only a handful of Haitian residents in Portland, Konbit Sante successfully campaigned to make Cap-Haitien a sister city to Portland.
Today the group has 12 employees working full time in Haiti, two in Portland and about 70 volunteers, many of whom go twice a year to Cap-Haitien for weeklong visits to help.
Some are medical professionals who do training or education. Others are plumbers and electricians who work on the hospital's infrastructure.
When they started, the hospital's reference books amounted to stacks of moldy medical journals in cardboard boxes. Konbit Sante outfitted the hospital with Internet access, allowing the staff access to the latest medical training and information online, Executive Director Nate Nickerson said.
"We have a long-term commitment with the public health system there," Nickerson said, noting that Justinian Hospital and the clinic are both operated by the Haitian Ministry of Health. "Our measure of success is, after we've gone, there is an improved capacity to care for the patients."
Because of the country's severe poverty, many patients - particularly children - are malnourished and never have had preventive care. Throughout the country, more than half the people live on less than $1 a day.
Mary Edwards, a nurse at Maine Medical Center, knows just how far a little money can go. She told her family she would like donations made to Konbit Sante in lieu of Christmas gifts, and the $1,000 fund that was created paid for all the pediatric medication at the hospital for a year. Once the container arrives in Haiti in mid- March, it will be met by about 25 Konbit Sante volunteers from Portland, Nickerson said.
This trip will include both medical and construction volunteers. The construction crew will help make electrical and plumbing improvements, such as providing better backup electricity for the hospital's two surgical rooms, while clinical volunteers will assist with program development in women's health, pediatrics and internal medicine.
Staff Writer Noel K. Gallagher can be contacted at 324-4888 or at:
ngallagher@pressherald.com
J. Michael Taylor, MD, MPH
Dr. Taylor is a practicing dermatologist in Portland with a career-long interest in international and community medicine. He is a graduate of Amherst College, University of Buffalo Medical School, and the Harvard School of Public Health, where he serves as a member of the Alumni Council. He has completed residencies in internal medicine and dermatology at the University of California at San Francisco. Following medical school he went to Nigeria as a U.S. Peace Corps physician. He has taught epidemiology at Dartmouth and was chief of the department of community medicine at Maine Medical Center where he established medical clinics in underserved parts of the state of Maine. He is currently a member of the American Academy of Dermatology Task Force for Education and Volunteers Abroad. Michael is the founder and visionary of Konbit Sante.
Links to Related Topics (Tags):
Headlines: February, 2007; Peace Corps Haiti; Directory of Haiti RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Haiti RPCVs; Peace Corps Nigeria; Directory of Nigeria RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Nigeria RPCVs; NGO's; Medicine; Service; Maine
When this story was posted in February 2007, this was on the front page of PCOL:
Peace Corps Online The Independent News Forum serving Returned Peace Corps Volunteers
| Chris Dodd's Vision for the Peace Corps Senator Chris Dodd (RPCV Dominican Republic) spoke at the ceremony for this year's Shriver Award and elaborated on issues he raised at Ron Tschetter's hearings. Dodd plans to introduce legislation that may include: setting aside a portion of Peace Corps' budget as seed money for demonstration projects and third goal activities (after adjusting the annual budget upward to accommodate the added expense), more volunteer input into Peace Corps operations, removing medical, healthcare and tax impediments that discourage older volunteers, providing more transparency in the medical screening and appeals process, a more comprehensive health safety net for recently-returned volunteers, and authorizing volunteers to accept, under certain circumstances, private donations to support their development projects. He plans to circulate draft legislation for review to members of the Peace Corps community and welcomes RPCV comments. |
| He served with honor One year ago, Staff Sgt. Robert J. Paul (RPCV Kenya) carried on an ongoing dialog on this website on the military and the peace corps and his role as a member of a Civil Affairs Team in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have just received a report that Sargeant Paul has been killed by a car bomb in Kabul. Words cannot express our feeling of loss for this tremendous injury to the entire RPCV community. Most of us didn't know him personally but we knew him from his words. Our thoughts go out to his family and friends. He was one of ours and he served with honor. |
| Peace Corps' Screening and Medical Clearance The purpose of Peace Corps' screening and medical clearance process is to ensure safe accommodation for applicants and minimize undue risk exposure for volunteers to allow PCVS to complete their service without compromising their entry health status. To further these goals, PCOL has obtained a copy of the Peace Corps Screening Guidelines Manual through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and has posted it in the "Peace Corps Library." Applicants and Medical Professionals (especially those who have already served as volunteers) are urged to review the guidelines and leave their comments and suggestions. Then read the story of one RPCV's journey through medical screening and his suggestions for changes to the process. |
| The Peace Corps is "fashionable" again The LA Times says that "the Peace Corps is booming again and "It's hard to know exactly what's behind the resurgence." PCOL Comment: Since the founding of the Peace Corps 45 years ago, Americans have answered Kennedy's call: "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." Over 182,000 have served. Another 200,000 have applied and been unable to serve because of lack of Congressional funding. The Peace Corps has never gone out of fashion. It's Congress that hasn't been keeping pace. |
| PCOL readership increases 100% Monthly readership on "Peace Corps Online" has increased in the past twelve months to 350,000 visitors - over eleven thousand every day - a 100% increase since this time last year. Thanks again, RPCVs and Friends of the Peace Corps, for making PCOL your source of information for the Peace Corps community. And thanks for supporting the Peace Corps Library and History of the Peace Corps. Stay tuned, the best is yet to come. |
| History of the Peace Corps PCOL is proud to announce that Phase One of the "History of the Peace Corps" is now available online. This installment includes over 5,000 pages of primary source documents from the archives of the Peace Corps including every issue of "Peace Corps News," "Peace Corps Times," "Peace Corps Volunteer," "Action Update," and every annual report of the Peace Corps to Congress since 1961. "Ask Not" is an ongoing project. Read how you can help. |
Read the stories and leave your comments.
Some postings on Peace Corps Online are provided to the individual members of this group without permission of the copyright owner for the non-profit purposes of criticism, comment, education, scholarship, and research under the "Fair Use" provisions of U.S. Government copyright laws and they may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner. Peace Corps Online does not vouch for the accuracy of the content of the postings, which is the sole responsibility of the copyright holder.
Story Source: Portland Press Herald
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Haiti; COS - Nigeria; NGO's; Medicine; Service
PCOL36483
38