|
Original Church in Cange
Father Fritz Lafontant
A brief history of the Cange
Haiti and Partners in Health:
1956
The village of Cange, on Haiti's Central Plateau,
is submerged by a dam on
the Artibonite River. Designed and funded largely by U.S. and
international
agencies, the dam is intended to promote agribusiness and to supply
the
capital city of Port-Au-Prince, many hours distant, with electrical
power.
Residents of Cange, all subsistence farmers, receive little or no
compensation for their homes and land, moving up to the barren
hillside as
squatters.
1962
Father Fritz and Yolande
Lafontant establish a primary school for the
children of the Cange area. Many of their students do not reach
adulthood--infectious diseases killed almost one-quarter of all
children.
1983
The Lafontant's and their
colleagues are joined by Paul Farmer, just accepted
to Harvard Medical School, and 18-year-old Ophelia Dahl.
1984
Working with local partners,
they establish a community-based health project
in Cange. Confronted with many illnesses no longer covered in the
U.S.
medical school curriculum, Farmer is forced to supplement his
Harvard
education with infectious-disease textbooks and do-it-yourself
guides.
1985
With the support of the
Episcopal Church in Haiti and the United States, and
from Boston businessman Tom White, the Clinique Bon Sauveur is
established
in Cange.
1986
The first case of AIDS on the
Central Plateau is identified by health
workers based in Cange. The disease becomes prevalent among the
region's
poorest residents, many returning from work as servants in the city.
1987
Partners In Health (PIH) is
founded by Farmer, White, Dahl, Harvard Medical
School student Jim Yong Kim, and their friend Todd McCormack. Its
primary
goal is to support activities in Central Haiti, including a clinic,
a
training program for community-health workers, and a mobile unit to
screen
residents of area villages for preventable diseases. A number of
schools are
established as well. Aided by PIH funds, the Lafontant's and other
local
residents establish partner organization Zanmi Lasante, Creole for
"Partners
In Health."
1988
In Haiti, PIH and Zanmi Lasante
launch a novel, community-based TB treatment
and control program that increases cure rates from about 50 to 100
percent.
1989
A new generation of
Haitian-American health activists begins working with
PIH through the "Haitian Teens Confront AIDS" program
(HTCA) in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Meanwhile, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas,
PIH
forms a partnership with health activists from the region's
indigenous
peasant communities struggling against both violence and preventable
diseases. Many of the ill are refugees from the genocidal war in
neighboring
Guatemala.
1990
Proje Sante Fanm, the first
women's health clinic in Central Haiti, is
founded in Cange. Five thousand women are evaluated in the first
year of
operation.
1993
For his work with PIH, Paul
Farmer is honored with a MacArthur Award. He
uses the entire $250,000 prize to establish the Institute for Health
and
Social Justice (IHSJ). The IHSJ launches a number of applied
research
projects investigating links between social and economic
inequalities and
poor health outcomes. Jim Kim assumes the role of PIH Executive
Director.
1994
In Haiti, both the clinic and
the community-health program are expanded. HIV
replaces TB as a leading infectious cause of death in certain
regions. The
first cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) are treated
in
Cange.
1995
At the urging of PIH board
member Father Jack Roussin of the Society of St.
James, PIH teams up with poor residents of Carabayllo, a shantytown
district
on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. Following the community-based model
developed in Haiti, PIH and partner organization Socios En Salud
(Spanish
for "Partners In Health") conduct a "community
diagnosis" in Carabayllo,
discovering persistent barriers impeding residents' access to health
care.
Together, they begin working to fill in those gaps, training
community
residents as health outreach workers, and developing health
interventions
targeted to community members' needs. An initial survey of
Carabayllo and
environs turns up an outbreak of tuberculosis that does not respond
to
standard antibiotic therapy. More than one hundred people are sick
with
these strains of MDR-TB--they had been declared
"incurable" by local and
international experts.
1996
PIH teams up with Maria
Contreras, a community activist based in the
Roxbury, Massachusetts neighborhood of Egleston Square. Like many
urban
neighborhoods in the U.S., Egleston Square--located ten minutes away
from
the Harvard Medical School campus--suffers from high levels of
poverty and
disease. Maria and PIH staff begin to train a team of neighborhood
activists, dubbed the "Soldiers of Health," to detect and
treat other
residents' preventable health problems. In Peru, meanwhile, PIH and
Socios
En Salud begin a joint project to treat MDR-TB patients in
Carabayllo. Most
of them begin immediately to show improvement, despite their
supposedly
"incurable" condition. Community residents are trained to
deliver the
complex drug therapies, including up to seven different antibiotics,
in
patients' homes. Back in the U.S., the Institute for Health and
Social
Justice publishes its first book, Women, Poverty, and AIDS, which is
awarded
the Eileen Basker Prize from the American Anthropological
Association.
1997
In Haiti, Zanmi Lasante is by
now treating almost 35,000 patients annually.
The Clinique Bon Sauveur complex includes a women's clinic, a
pediatric-care
facility, an operating room, and a dormitory annex to the village
school. At
Harvard Medical School's Department of Social Medicine, the Program
in
Infectious Disease and Social Change (PIDSC) is founded to serve as
an
academic arm of PIH. Meanwhile, as MDR-TB patients in Lima continue
to
receive treatment from PIH and Socios En Salud, a World Health
Organization
study finds that MDR-TB has become widespread in over thirty
"hot spots"
around the world. Most patients, the WHO reports, are receiving no
effective
therapy and are spreading their deadly illness to family members,
neighbors
and co-workers.
1998
The first group of MDR-TB
patients in Carabayllo "graduates" from the
two-year course of treatment. Partners In Health and the Program in
Infectious Disease and Social Change at Harvard Medical School
(PIDSC)
invite international health experts to Boston to discuss clinical
findings
from the PIH-Socios En Salud project. In light of these results, the
World
Health Organization changes its recommendations for treating
drug-resistant
tuberculosis. With sponsorship from the Open Society Institute, PIH
and
PIDSC staff help to develop international standards for treating
MDR-TB in
resource-poor settings.
1999
The Zanmi Lasante sociomedical
complex is treating over 50,000 patients
annually. A new MDR-TB treatment facility is built with funding from
PIH
founder Thomas J. White, and the Haitian Ministry of Health
designates it as
the primary referral site for the entire country. Zanmi Lasante and
PIH also
begin an "HIV Equity Initiative" which provides AIDS
sufferers in the region
with antiretroviral therapy. Back in Boston, in collaboration with
Harvard
Medical School and the Soros Foundation, PIH staff publish a
groundbreaking
study on the global impact of MDR-TB. The report highlights the
importance
of community-based care in treating this and other "emerging
infectious
diseases." Paul Farmer and Jim Yong Kim, along with other PIH
staff, are
active in World Health Organization efforts to establish pilot
MDR-TB
treatment programs, and to organize drug-procurement systems.
2000
The Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation announces a grant through the Program in
Infectious Disease and Harvard Medical School to fund MDR-TB
research and
treatment efforts in Peru, and the former Soviet Union. Within five
years--working with the WHO, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and
Prevention and Peruvian health authorities--PIH and Socios En Salud
will use
these funds to expand their community-based treatment program to
cover all
of Peru, while training health personnel from other countries with
high
rates of MDR-TB. By this means, the methods first developed by PIH
in the
squatter settlements of central Haiti will become standard in poor
communities all over the world.
History from the
partners in Health web site www.pih.org
As you can see, Cange Haiti is a complex community. Cange is one of the poorest
regions of Haiti, because of the
hydroelectric Dam on the lake bordering the region. This
project flooded the main fertile area of the valley and pushed the
people of the area up onto rocky hillsides with very little farmable
land. It has been the combined vision of Father Lafontant and
Dr. Paul Farmer that has driven what has
become one of the premier social, economic; medical complexes in a
third world country.
Inside the 2 story church in Cange
Prior to this project, health care in this region was available
for the wealthy. All hospitals in the region were cash only,
pay before you enter. It did not matter how severe your
medical need was; if you could not pay, you did not get any medical
attention. The clinic that is in Cange now, is a sliding scale
fee clinic. The less money you have, the less you have to pay
to get medical services.
Child being treating in hospital for burns received
from falling into a cooking fire
Over the last 15 years, this complex has grown at an almost
unbelievable rate. The complex now has a two story church, a
two floor hospital with an operating room (which is planned to be
expanded to 2 operating rooms and a critical care area for post
operative care), a dental clinic, a women's health clinic, a model
family planning clinic, a model Tuberculosis treatment facility, an
eye clinic, a 450 student school, a preschool program designed to
prevent malnutrition in preschool children, and many other buildings
to provide support to these services.
Entrance to Clinic Complex
Preschool children coming for meal
Women working in sewing center
The water project for the region is a technological marvel.
Before the water project, the people of Cange had to walk 1/2 mile
to a VERY steep hill, and down the hill to a fresh water spring near
the lake. Then they had to carry this water back up to there
homes. A group of engineers from Greenville, South Carolina, led by Pierce
Williams, designed a system to cap the spring and run the water down
the mountainside through smaller and smaller pipes to create high
pressure water supply. This high pressure water drives a pump
which pumps the fresh water to a large underground cistern above the
village which acts like a water tower to feed water to eight water
stations throughout the village.
Pump Station for the water project
Water station in village
The current project underway at the village is the
building of a school in Bas (lower) Cange. The children of the
village have to cross 2 streams and go up the water project hill and
then walk about a half a mile to get to school each day. Many
of the children do not go to school because the trip is too
strenuous for them. Several local churches here in the upstate
including Holy Trinity Lutheran Church have raised over $75,000 to
build a school for this village and provide them with operating
funds for the first year. This will be an ongoing project to
continue to provide the operating funds for this school.
Children from Bas Cange who will attend new school
A prototype school building
(the new school will look very similar to this building)
A check for $18,000.00 for school operational expenses presented to
Father & Mrs. Fritz Lafontant and their daughter Marie Flore Chipps
at the
Episcopal convention in Greenville on 10/26/02
Our current
project is to continue support for the village of Bois Joli.
In the fall of 2004, we funded the building of a 6 room school for
students grades K through 5th grade. The school now has 6
teachers and has over 400 students. Other recent projects in
the region that we have help with include the building of a 3rd
floor on the main school in Cange which now houses grades 9-12.
They have also built a dorm for families on the main compound.
The next project
we would like to undertake is the building of a church/community
center and the development of an agricultural center to grow their
own food for the village of Bois Joli. We will need to raise
approximately $60,000.00 for this project.
If you are interested in donating money to help the
people of Cange, please contact Holy Trinity Lutheran Church at
htlc@charterinternet.com
or call the church at (864) 224-4220.
Click here
to download Cange School PowerPoint slide set
(very large file (11Mb) will take several minutes to open)
Click here to download picsa slide show seen at chili dinner at St.
John's church
(This is a 210MB file will take a very long time to come down)
(not recommended on a dialup connection)
Unzip this file to and then run the picasaCD.exe file to play the
presentation
|
