 |
|
Marilize holds one of the premature babies, or ‘petit poids’ in Choscal Hospital, Cite Soleil. Photo: MSF |
“Most of my mission was spent at Choscal Hospital in the heart of Cite Soleil, the biggest and poorest slum in Haiti – not to mention the Northern hemisphere. Within hours of the earthquake in 2010, MSF had partnered with the Haitian Ministry of Health to support the services of Choscal hospital. By the time I arrived in 2011, MSF was providing a much bigger range of services in the hospital, 24 hours a day. Working with a very capable team, I was responsible for the administration, finance and human resource management of the hospital’s 290 MSF staff as well as 150 Ministry of Health staff.
Port-au-Prince is hot, dusty and very polluted. There is no public waste removal system and clean water is hard to come by. Many people are still living destitute lives in tents, with nowhere else to go. The rubble and ruins are still there, even the wrecks of flattened cars.
Each of my Haitian colleagues had their own story about the earthquake and could recall the exact moment it hit – where they were, what they were doing, how they felt. Everyone lost someone dear to them.
Even though I had an office job, I loved going around the hospital to meet patients and staff. My favourite patients were the premature babies, called “petit poids” (directly translated from French as ‘small weight’), not so far from the word “petit pois” or ‘small peas’! Many mothers had extremely poor health, so we had lots of premature babies, some weighing as little as 800g.”
 |
|
Scenes in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, where nearly 500,000 Haitians are still displaced. Photo: Marilize Ackerman |
 |
| A premature baby in Choscal Hospital, City Soleil. MSF provides a range of obstetric services in 5 medical projects in Haiti. Photo: Marilize Ackerman/MSF |
Printer-friendly version