New York HIV/AIDS organization continues Haiti relief efforts
Responding to desperate pleas for help, one of New York's leading HIV/AIDS service organizations continues to work in Haiti to replace health facilities destroyed in last month's earthquake.
Staff and volunteers from Housing Works, which provides a variety of medical, housing and other services, have been in the devastated country since the weekend after the it took place. The earthquake wiped out virtually all the clinics that serve Haitians with HIV/AIDS. Housing Works is working with three other New York-based groups and a network of Haitian agencies to reopen a family clinic the Brooklyn-based Diaspora Health Services sponsors and two others.
The family clinic, Centre Medico-social de Port-au-Prince, and an AIDS health center in the capital are already operational. The other, which is about 70 miles away from Port-au-Prince in St. Marc, will open soon.
Housing Works responded immediately to e-mails from members of PHAP+, a coalition of 13 Haiti-based HIV/AIDS groups, that it started to receive the day after the earthquake.
By the following weekend, its staff and volunteers were in the country, bringing along supplies, medicine and food they trucked in from Santo Domingo in the neighboring Dominican Republic.
EDGE spoke with Charles King, president and chief executive officer of Housing Works, and Dr. Vaty Poitevien, the group's Haitian-born medical director, yesterday.
Poitevien grew up in Port-au-Prince and lost her parents in the earthquake. She told EDGE their bodies were found in the rubble of their home.
King and Poitevien reported Housing Works' efforts thus far have not focused on people with HIV/AIDS. Like other health care providers, its people are addressing immediate needs--treating injured survivors.
Poitevien has visited Haiti only once since the earthquake, when she accompanied King on his first trip. She formed a team with her physician husband and her cousin, a Navy medic, to care for victims.
Since then, she has coordinated medical operations from New York and recruited doctors and nurses to spend one or two weeks in Haiti as volunteers.
King left New York earlier this morning for his third trip to Haiti. He said the organization has already booked volunteers through the first half of March and they're seeking more to visit through April.
"As it gets further away, I anticipate it'll be harder to persuade people to go," King told EDGE.
Contributions continue to pour in. King said the agency has received more than $100,000 worth of medical supplies and medications and close to $40,000 in financial support. Housing Works itself continues to spend about $10,000 a week to sustain their efforts on the ground.
King and Poitevien further described what it was like to be on the ground in Haiti amid such devastation.
When they arrived, they saw the country's largest HIV/AIDS clinic had collapsed, killing every patient and staff member.
"The camera lens focuses on only part of it," Poitevien said. "What is really striking is that the scale is magnified. The devastation is everywhere."
King described an equally ghastly scene when he and Poitevian first arrived.
"Bloated bodies all over the streets, people walking around in a complete state of shock and feeling tremors every day," he said.
King said the situation has improved somewhat, but survivors continue to confront serious challenges.
"Superficially things have settled down," he said. "The main streets and avenues are cleared. You see a lot of military directing traffic, but in fact the vast majority of people are still living on piles of rubble. At best they might have a sheet, which keeps out the sun in the daytime but is not very effective if it rains. There's a great concern about malnutrition for children and people who have medical conditions. The main food is rice and we've been bringing in beans. It's not an environment people would want to live in. It's still hell."
Poitevien noted something else the media can't adequately cover: the people's spirit.
"Despite what happened, people are back working, going to the market," she said.
Poitevien highlighted a woman who had an open fracture the first day she was there.
"As soon as we set and dressed it, she proceeded to get someone to wash her hair," she said. "Parents were giving the children their baths before sleeping in the streets. I had forgotten that spirit. It was really a reminder for us: 'Okay. We got hope. I think we can rebuild it'."
Poitevien described another incident.
"One child was crying desperately, but there wasn't anything wrong with him," she recalled. "The doctor suspected he might have been hungry, so she gave him one of only two energy bars she had. His face lit up and he devoured it."
His mother asked for the other one, but Poitevien said she wanted to give it to another child. Others in the group admonished the mother for asking and she understood.
"I knew she was hungry, but there was such a dignity in spite of losing everything," Poitevien observed. "She's a school teacher. That could have been me."
Living arrangements for the Housing Works crew are primitive. Thy slept on bedrolls on the ground and cooked on charcoal grills during their first weekend in the country. They now live in tents, but another challenge remains getting supplies into Haiti.
Delta Airlines has waived its baggage limits and fees, but getting 40 wheelchairs, several hundred pairs of crutches and other larger items remains difficult.
"We haven't been able to get them down there," King said. "We're working on trucking them to Miami and getting them on a boat."
During an interview with WNYC in New York last month, King added he fears disaster efforts may fail because of a lack of overall organization, people not speaking the language and too many going to Haiti to feed their own egos on what he called a "disaster junket."
"A lot of the relief efforts are completely disorganized," he told EDGE. "The coordination at the macro level is being done very poorly. A lot of the organizations don't have a good connection with the ground. To be treated at field hospitals you have to get past American military. If we're not sending a doctor with them who has an American passport they get turned away. In some instances there's more concern about security than getting people treated."
King reported a woman came into a clinic just a few days ago with her leg in a cast.
"The x-ray was taken after the cast was put on, but the bone had not been set," he said. "She still had a broken leg and it had to be reset."
In a creative move to raise additional funds to help Haitian HIV/AIDS activists rebuild their infrastructure, King will cut off his trademark pony tail, which he's had for 20 years, at "Shear Madness," a Feb. 23 charity auction. It will go to the highest bidder.
The Rev. Rick Warren, the Baptist minister who supports Prop 8 and spoke at President Barack Obama's inauguration, placed the first bid--$1,000--and he challenged others to give. King has frequently sparred with Warren over faith-based AIDS programs that neglect gay and bisexual men and saw a marketing opportunity. Warren agreed to contribute a supportive quote to a news release.
Some activists expressed annoyance over the row, but King simply laughed when EDGE asked him about it.
"My ponytail is definitely coming off and the only question is how much money it will bring," he said.