Wave: March / April 2010 - Winnipeg in motion

egion news
Help for Haiti
Winnipeg father-and-son team seeks to
help country devastated by earthquake
By Martin Zeilig
Dr. Pierre Plourde and a young patient in Haiti.
Winnipeg Health Region doctor is leading an effort to
A deliver medical care and other assistance to people
living in Haiti, a country still struggling to overcome the
effects of a devastating earthquake earlier this year.
Dr. Pierre Plourde, a Medical Officer of
Health with the Region, will be heading a
team of volunteer health-care professionals,
including doctors, nurses, dentists, and
other volunteers from Winnipeg, Ottawa,
and Calgary.
The volunteers hope to arrive in Bon
Repos, one of the poorest neighbourhoods
in Port-au-Prince, in May. Once there, they
will provide medical and related assistance
at the El-Shaddai Feeding Centre and
Primary School, as well as at a clinic and
nursing school.
The impoverished country was hit hard
by an earthquake near the capital of Portau-Prince
on Jan. 12. According to news
reports, as many as 200,000 people were
killed when the earthquake struck. A reported
300,000 people have been injured,
4,000 people have had amputations and
1.5 million people are homeless.
Although assistance has been pouring
into Haiti for a few months, Plourde says
there still is a major health crisis in the
country.
“The health-care needs of Haiti prior
to the earthquake were immense,” says
Plourde. “Prior to the earthquake, over 80
per cent of Haitians were desperately poor.
Many did not have access to clean water
and 40 per cent did not have access to
medical care. Haiti has the highest infant
and maternal mortality rate, the worst AIDS
problem and the worst malnutrition in the
Western Hemisphere. In the aftermath of
this devastation, the health-care needs of
this impoverished nation will increase tenfold,”
he says.
Plourde has worked in Haiti for years
under the auspices of EMAS Canada, a
non-governmental Christian agency that
supports health-care initiatives around the
world.
He first visited Haiti in 1982 when he
was still a medical student at the University
of Ottawa. “I went down there to do training
in tropical medicine,” he explains.
While there, he developed a friendship
with his Creole (the local language)
teacher, a gentleman known simply as St.
Hilaire, who went on to become a church
minister in Bon Repos. “He was a devoted
man of God with a vision for the people of
Haiti, who did marvelous work with the El-
Shaddai Baptist Church,” says Plourde.
Within a few of years of its founding, St.
Hilaire’s church went from five members
to more than 500. Among other things,
the church managed a program that fed
300 children several times a week, says
Plourde. The feeding centre has been providing
supplemental nutrition to hundreds
of children for 15 years now.
At St. Hilaire’s invitation, Plourde went to
Haiti again in 2004 with a team of healthcare
providers to help support medical and
dental teaching clinics, the primary school
and the nutrition centre in the community.
St. Hilaire died in late December 2008 after
being shot by thieves during an attempted
robbery at his home.
EMAS Canada is also helping to put
Haitians in a position to help their own
citizens. For example, a “graduate” of the
feeding centre entered medical school in
Port-au-Prince, thanks to support from the
organization. “Now, in her final year, she is
anticipating graduation in 2010,” Plourde
says. In addition, there are plans to explore
the possibility of supporting extended
nurse-practitioner training for existing
10 WAVE