Help Haiti
Housing Works Helps Haiti (You Can, Too)
Two percent of Haitians are living with HIV/AIDS, but most of the AIDS clinics in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were destroyed by the devastating earthquake of January 12.
Housing Works and three other New York City-based organizations (Aid for AIDS, Caribbean Women’s Health Center, and Diaspora Community Services) are partnering with Haitian AIDS organizations to fund and operate two desperately needed new AIDS clinics.
One clinic, located in central Port-au-Prince, is already up and running and has been endorsed by the Haiti Public Health Ministry. By Wednesday, February 3, the clinic had registered 305 patients. The clinic currently treats up to 40 people per day.
The other clinic is in St.-Marc, outside of the earthquake zone, where many Haitians living with HIV/AIDS have fled, in part because the pioneering AIDS group and Housing Works’ partner FEBS is located there. It served 300 people during its first day of operation, February 10.
In collaboration with the organizations named above, we have also been able to reopen a family health clinic sponsored by the Brooklyn-based organization Diaspora Health Services. Called the Centre Medico-social de Port-au-Prince, the clinic is located on Avenue Poplard in an abjectly poor neighborhood. The clinic treated 50 people its opening day, and by February 3, had treated 267 people. The clinic regularly treats 47 people per day.
As of February 11th, the clinics have served 1,130 people.
Blogs from haiti
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Haiti Volunteer Profile: Shana Spitzman, R.N.
“How could I not go to Haiti?” That was Shana Spitzman’s reaction when she heard about the health clinics that Housing Works and other New York City groups opened in Haiti after the cataclysmic earthquake on January 12. A registered nurse, Spitzman, 29, found out about our relief efforts while working part-time at the Housing Works’ Cylar House Adult Day Health Center. Her nursing experience with underserved populations both in New York and with nonprofit groups in rural Kenya and Guatemala served her well during her recent one-week stint volunteering at the two Port-au-Prince clinics. “You’re dealing with limited resources, so you have to be creative about treating people, just like you do in New York City when people don’t have insurance or limited access to electricity and water or where there is a language barrier,” Spitzman said. See Spitzman talk about her experience: During her Haiti rotation, which wrapped…
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The UN Responds to Calls for Haiti AIDS Strategy, But Activists Are Skeptical
There’s nothing like a call for a demonstration to get action. Yesterday, following our conversation about making good on the threat Edner made at the last HIV Cluster meeting, he began making calls to enlist support for a demonstration later this week over the lack of a plan from the UN and USAID for caring for people with HIV/AIDS. Within hours, he received a call from a senior in-country advisor to the UN. “We at the UN and USAID are working on a plan together,” she said. “We should have something out soon. Now would not be a good time to have a demonstration.” Edner noted that six weeks has now passed without a plan, much less any action. “We will meet with you and the PHAP+ leadership later this week, and share with you what we have developed,” the advisor said. “Just agree not to do a demonstration until… -
UN and UNAIDS Must Address Needs of Haitians with HIV/AIDS
The disaster in Haiti continues to unfold even as the world’s attention begins to shift. Chile suffered a much larger earthquake than Haiti’s this weekend that spawned fears of a tsunami throughout the Pacific. Yet there has apparently been far less damage and much less loss of life, as much of Chile has been built in anticipation of such an event. ‘ Meanwhile, the UN and USAID acknowledged this week that they have less than half the tents they need to shelter everyone made homeless by Haiti’s January 12 earthquake and the tremblers that followed. The Haitian government, the international organizations, nor the U.S. has developed a coherent plan to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic in light of the earthquake. There still has been no meaningful effort to identify people living with HIV to ensure that they have access to medications, to shelter, or to food and water. Instead, they are…
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Why are we in Haiti?
Here in New York City, Housing Works has numerous Haitian staff and serves many Haitian immigrants and descendents annually. Our dedication to our own Haitian community led us in 2008 to begin close partnerships with Haiti-based AIDS organizations. Since that time, we have worked with PHAP+, a coalition of Haiti-based AIDS groups led by people living with HIV/AIDS, to expand the availability of comprehensive AIDS services in Haiti.
Our strong network of connections to Haitian AIDS service providers means that we are ideally suited to help rebuild Haiti’s AIDS services with all due haste. We recognize the urgency of emergency care and relief, but we also know that we must start planning for the long-term in order to stem the tide of AIDS in Haiti.
Cries for help
Please! Please! We’re dying! Please do whatever you can to provide some help down here. Clothes, food, medications, etc. We are in need. Please! Please! We’ dying
These words come from an e-mail that we received from Edner Boucicaut, one of our Haitian contacts, after the devastating January 12 earthquake. Within days of receiving it, Housing Works President and CEO Charles King and other staffers were on a plane with $40,000 worth of medical and emergency relief supplies. A week later, Housing Works physicians, including one whose parents were killed in the earthquake, had treated dozens of injuries and provided food to 350 households.
Since January 12, we’ve raised more than $40,000 in cash donations and have distributed $112,860 worth of AIDS medications and medical supplies provided by Housing Works and Aid for AIDS.
