There have been many presenters today and a short summary and highlight of most is included below. Please feel free to email me at gmparker1@gmail.com if you have questions about the presentations as I'd be happy to try to expand more on what the presenters said or try and grab them for a question.
Dr. Claude Surena (President of Haiti Medical Association): He spoke about the human resource issues within the Haitian healthcare system. Primarily the concerns are the incentives (financial and non-financial) provided to physicians and nurses. The system must do a better job of incenting its healthcare professionals to advance their work and stay in the country. He noted that it is a difficult problem as the Haitian budget for healthcare is very low. Much is done to try and train professionals but compensation for this training is not often in place. At the moment most healthcare professionals source additional work from NGO's to supplement their incomes, but this is not always a sustainable solution.
Dr. Rosier Morales (MSPP): The doctor spoke about Haiti's National Plan and its healthcare implications. The outline was very general but suggested that the country needed a decentralized system and that current priorities were to adapt to the needs post earthquake as well as establish a foundation from which to build capacity for the future.
Dr. Enrique Ginzburg (University of Miami Global Institute): The group has put forth a proposal for increases in Critical Care Centers in Haiti. These are trauma centers capable of handling burns, heart attacks, strokes, and maternal emergencies among other things. He suggested that to capitalize on the momentum of the earthquake 16 trauma centers be built throughout the country. The Bernard Mevs center would serve as a launching point that could train necessary professionals in an expedited fashion and in turn they would train more professionals. This exponential process would put healthcare workers through 6 months of training each and create capacity for 16 trauma centers. It is an aggressive plan for which much support and consensus building will be necessary before it becomes reality.
Dr. Diane Jean-Francois (Catholic Medical Mission Board):One of their primary projects has been increasing the health systems capacity to deal with amputees. Particularly they want to be able to provide them with prosthetics and have a coalition including Hangar Orthopedics and the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Haiti (among others) that are part of the effort. They are also focused on education for amputees and training in the trade of making prostheses.
Pediatrics Breakout Session: This session focused on the reduction of infant and neonatal mortality rates as well as nutrition programs. AS one would expect the mortality statistics for infants and newborns are quite bad although it has steadily improved for infants but not so much for neonates. One of MSPP's initiatives is to try and guarantee perinatal service access to all mothers and children. Many of the neonatal deaths are the results of conditions that can be effectively managed through proper perinatal care. Children's Nutrition Program from Jacmel also spoke about their long existing child nutrition program. They use an integrated approach that includes acute malnutrition treatment, nutrition education (Positive Deviance Hearth Programs to educate mothers of moderately malnourished), and clean water programs. The programs are overseen buy Haitian trained "monitrices" who monitor the children through the Ready To Use Therapeutic Foods(RUTF) programs and PD Hearth Programs. The RUTF program for severely malnourished uses Medika Mamba from Meds and Foods For Kids.
Stay tuned for updates from tomorrow's sessions and possibly video of a key speech or two!
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