Elisabeth and I finally had a chance to visit Ft. Liberte for the first time on Saturday, Jan. 28. We were led by Trish Putnam, a nurse practitioner from near D.C., who also had her husband Walter with her for his first trip to Haiti.
Trish is with the Friends of Ft. Liberte that has been working for many years there to develop a clinic, and has supported the development of schools, an orphanage, and a farm. They work closely with Pastor Andre Jean, who we had the pleasure of meeting. He has been working for over 30 years and has build impressive development projects for the community.
The clinic was very nice and well organized and supplied. They have a Haitian doctor, 2 nurses, and Ti Papi is the clinic manager. They have a lab with a lab technicican, and do malaria, blood type, urinalysis, Widal test, and QBC counts, among other tests. Several visiting teams of medical professionals come there every year to supplement the ongoing clinic. Mary, a PA, was there working already at that time. (Trish and Nancy then helped us with a health screening at an orphanage in Vaudreuil.)
We noticed that the church and guest house of Pastor Andre was across the street from Caritas of the Northeast, headed by our friend Father Medenal. We spoke with both Father Medenal and Pastor Andre of this coincidence and encouraged them to work together on health projects that they both work on, which they were very receptive to doing.
We also visited the beautiful new orphanage buildings being built by a visiting construction team of Friends of Ft. Liberte.
On our way out of town, we stopped by the government hospital in Ft. Liberte, and met the orthopedic team brought in by Berry Rice of Clinique Esperance et Vie of Terrier Rouge, who was setting up to do orthopedic surgeries in the coming week. We had sent out a message to the Network about this opportunity, and were looking for cases in our travels (we ended up sending 3 patients).
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