Support Us!

Endowment Fund Contributions

A direct way to donate to our project is in the works.  In the meantime, please visit our Parent organization, Adventist Health International’s donation page.  Clicking on “Donate,” will take you to PayPal’s website.   After indicating how much you would like to donate, there will be a note section on the following page for you to type “HAITI STUDENT MISSION PROJECT.”

Adventist Health International Contact

Brewster, Becky
AHI Gift Recorder, Corporate Office, Loma Linda, CA, USA
(909) 558-0242
bbrewster@ahinetwork.org

Concrete Hospital Needs

Some may take for granted a hospital’s access to basic things like IV poles and clean sheets. But they are absolutely critical to a hospital’s function. You may be surprised to learn that supplying Hospital Adventiste d’Haiti with these basic necessities will dramatically improve its ability to serve its patient population.

Working with Dr. Archer, we’ve assessed and prioritized the hospital’s needs. We hope reading this will help you better understand the dire need and motivate you to support the hospital.

• ER: Department needs a defibrillator and crash cart, portable ECG, urine dip kits and urine HCG kits for pregnancy tests.
• OR: The hospital has only one functioning OR room simply because the second room has no OR lights. They lack autoclaves, and must send out all their tools for cleaning. Two large autoclaves would shorten instrument turnover time and increase OR capacity. The OR rents cautery units for basic cutting. Owning the machines would decrease the cost of surgery for the poor. They also only have one suction machine; obtaining a second machine for use outside the OR is a high priority.
• Clinics: They have ophthalmology and pediatric exam rooms, but they need to convert six more rooms next to ER into examination rooms. The conversion of additional rooms will allow the hospital to schedule different types of clinics on the same day.
• Lab: Expanding the lab’s capability to run basic tests will reduce the need to outsource. The hospital needs lab techs trained in American standards to visit and help train the current lab technicians. Simple solutions go a long way. Our basic lab setup includes: a refrigerator, hematocrit centrifuge, ability to do cultures and sensitivity of pathogens, blood gases, small autoclave. Lower on our wish list is a dual-view microscope that allows two people to read slides together. We currently have the ability to do complete blood counts, malaria blood smears, erythrocyte sedimentation rates, reticuloycte counts, eosinophil count, and liver function tests.
• Pharmacy: We need a refrigerator w/ thermometer. Currently 50% of the sales come from the clients, 25% from the pharmacy, and 25% from the visa clients. A simple solution is to get a refrigerator w/ a thermometer. We are also looking for some pharmacy students to join together with our class on improving this pharmacy. We also look forward to adding healthy low cost grains and food and have this pharmacy expand and be known as a public health icon.
• Grounds: We need to replace our non-functional boiler so that hot water can be made. We need to create a simple drainage system to stop mosquitoes from breeding. Basic tools such as a voltmeter are needed to help maintain the grounds. We are looking into the addition of solar power and a water purification system. A group of students are looking into helping the hospital and local school plant some crops to bring in a income to support the care of the poor.
• Housekeeping: Two industrial size washing machines would be a huge blessing to the women who currently work with their hands. Simple cleaning materials such as buckets, mops, and brooms would replace broken material.
• Wards: The wards could use new linens, patient gowns, bath towels, bed pans, gloves, and IV poles.
• Radiology: Neck protection for radiology would limit the exposure of the lab tech to thyroid damage.
• Nursing: The nursing department has asked for feeding tubes, tubing, oxyhood, breast pumps, IV poles, linens, diapers, oxygen flow meter, and humidifiers.
• Communication? Currently we are looking into a more robust communication solution since our Internet access is unreliable.
• OB: Ultrasound- We need an ultrasound machine to help doctors diagnose fetal cardiac, abdominal, and other OB/GYN issues. We need an incubator for the delivery room. Lower on the list of priorities is mammography machine.
• Power: The hospital currently does not receive power from the state due to a debt of $23,000 US dollars, so they run off of 3 generators 24 hours per day.
• Logistics: They only have one functional hospital vehicle, which must be used for patients and limits ability for the hospital to go to outside NGO meetings and health institution meetings.
• Administration: We had an MBA student do a 2-year audit of their financials. He found the hospital to be well-run, using their limited resources very efficiently. They maintain their accounting records in QuickBooks. We have detailed information that will allow us to track changes as the hospital is improved. The hospital has asked for two qualified administrative assistants who speak French to come down for one to two years and train locals.
• Our senior year we hope to have a constant flow of students thought the hospital, working with local bilingual students from the university, these students utilize the blessing of our education to help transform peoples lives with quality health care. We will rotate under Dr. Archer seeing a wide variety of cases and infectious disease.