Open Architecture Network

New facility will provide needed medical services for more than 250,000 Haitians in poverty-stricken region with little access to healthcare Nashville, Tenn. — Visitation Hospital Foundation (VHF) today announced it will celebrate the grand opening and dedication of a new healthcare facility in an impoverished and severely underserved area of Haiti on January 19, 2008. Visitation Clinic, located in the rural village of Petite Rivière de Nippes, in the southwestern countryside of Haiti, will provide life-saving medical treatment to thousands of Haitian citizens. Currently, more than 254,000 Haitians living in the region have minimal or no access to healthcare. The nearest medical facility is a four-hour drive away on unpaved, occasionally impassable, roads. The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti has only 30 hospitals that serve its population of more than eight million people. The average life expectancy is 48 years for men and 51 for women. Ten percent of children die before the age of five. Founded by Theresa Patterson in 1999, Visitation Hospital Foundation is the culmination of three decades of advocacy and missionary work in Haiti. The Foundation was started with the goal of building a hospital to provide competent and compassionate healthcare to the people of southwest Haiti and to empower them with resources to pursue their basic right to health and health education. Visitation Clinic is the first phase in the construction of Visitation Hospital, a 23,000-square-foot comprehensive healthcare facility expected to be completed by 2010. Fundraising is currently underway to raise $1.5 million to complete the hospital facility, which will house more than 76 beds, two general care wards, three operating suites, an ICU Unit, emergency room, OB/GYN services, and pediatric services. It also will feature a staff house, patient family housing, a kitchen, a nursery, a chapel, and administrative offices. Visitation Hospital will be the first facility in Haiti to offer pediatric cardiovascular surgery through surgical teams visiting three times a year, eliminating the need for Haitian children to travel outside of the country to receive life-saving surgery. “During my journeys to Haiti over the past 30 years, I have witnessed firsthand the appalling health conditions and the serious need for medical care in the country,” Patterson said. “Visitation Clinic and Visitation Hospital are wonderful additions to Petite Rivière de Nippes, because they will meet the medical needs of Haitians in a region with little or no access to healthcare services and will save the lives of thousands of people.” Clinic to offer essential services The 4,065-square-foot Visitation Clinic includes two medical/dental procedure rooms, seven exam rooms, a pharmacy, a laboratory, and digital radiology services. The clinic will offer community-based outreach programs and primary healthcare services, including immunizations, de-worming of children and adults, a nutrition education program and food bank, tuberculosis prevention and treatment, Vitamin A distribution, STD/AIDS prevention and treatment, a midwifery program and breastfeeding education, oral rehydration in homes, distribution of bed nets to reduce the spread of malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses, water purification, an agricultural program, and ongoing training of clinicians. Tom Grabenstein, M.D., a family physician in Clarksville, Tenn. who has organized and led numerous medical missions in Haiti, will serve as medical advisor for Visitation Clinic. “This clinic, and later the hospital, will be saving lives everyday in a country that has only one doctor for every 8,000 people,” Grabenstein said. “The people of Haiti are afflicted with many preventable and curable diseases that have been eradicated in most parts of the world. They suffer from tuberculosis, AIDS, typhoid, diphtheria, tetanus, polio, bacterial and protozoal dysenteries, malaria, and malnutrition. We have the opportunity to deliver an unprecedented level of healthcare, improving the health status of Haiti’s poor.” Visitation Hospital Foundation is working closely with the Haitian Ministry of Health to collect and analyze public health data. Also, VHF is working in partnership with the University of Notre Dame to fight lymphatic filariasis, a parasitic tropical disease affecting tens of thousands of Haitians. Funded through a $5 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the filariasis partnership project will work to dispense parasite-killing drugs and co-fortified iodized salt, with a target date for complete eradication of filariasis by 2012. Hospital helping to provide clean water, jobs to Haitians Visitation Hospital Foundation currently provides purified drinking water to 1,200 families in the local community through the Gift of Water program. In January 2008, 400 additional families in the Petite Rivière de Nippes area will be added to the clean water program. The hospital also is collaborating with Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church in Carmel, Ind., to provide a city-wide water system that offers purified water to the community. The partnership plans to eventually extend the water purification program to Haitians in surrounding areas. Visitation Hospital Foundation has employed Haitian citizens, such as architect engineer/contractor Abdou Fall, as well as local cabinetmakers, nurses and additional staff members, a vital economic boost given the extremely high unemployment rate in Haiti’s countryside. Additionally, a Community Advisory Council, with broad representation from the Petite Rivière de Nippes area, will ensure that the community has a voice in the plans for Visitation Hospital. The Advisory Council has been instrumental in conducting a community health survey and planning arrangements for the dedication celebration on January 19. Building features sustainable design Visitation Clinic was designed to have minimal impact on its local natural environment and to be as sustainable and energy efficient as possible. Architect Alan Dooley of Nashville-based Dooley Associates led a team of volunteer designers from Nashville that included Electrical Engineer Tony Pezzi of Parsons Engineering, plumbing designers from Rock City Mechanical, and medical design experts from the Nashville Hospital Architectural firm GTG. The site for the clinic and hospital is located on a hilltop to catch ocean breezes, avoid mosquitoes and minimize adverse impacts on sensitive ecosystem areas. Additionally, with design input from the sustainable energy vendor Big From Mountain, the building is equipped with solar panels, energy efficient appliances, fans and on-site renewable energy. Most rainwater from the roof will be captured and saved for re-use. The clinic uses as many local materials as possible, thereby benefiting the local economy while minimizing fuel usage. “Power supplies in Haiti are scarce and unreliable, so it was important for us to design Visitation Clinic to be as energy efficient and self-sufficient as possible,” said Dooley. “Our goal for this clinic and the hospital is to create facilities that reliably and cost-effectively benefit the local community for the long-term without compromising the natural environment of Petite Rivière de Nippes.” About Visitation Hospital Foundation Visitation Hospital Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in March 1999 to provide health care for the people of Haiti and to empower them with the resources to pursue their basic right to health care and health education. VHF headquarters is based in Nashville, Tenn. For more information, visit www.visitationhospital.org or call 615-385-2363