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For two weeks in March, Theresa Tremblay and Hazel Smith put their nursing skills to good use at Mother Theresa’s Hospital in Port au Prince, as well as at a medical clinic in Labadee, where they also painted a new school. The pair traveled to Haiti with a group of people from Windsor called “Hearts Together for Haiti". Theresa and Hazel, along with 25 others, brought with them 3,700 pounds of luggage filled with medical and school supplies, clothing and even a water pump for a well. It
didn’t take them long to see why Haiti is the poorest country
in the Western Hemisphere. With very little electricity, clean water
or food, and no sanitation of any kind, diseases are rampant in
Haiti. Health care is minimal or nonexistent to the poor. Typhoid,
malaria, TB, HIV, hepatitis, parasites and severe malnutrition are
everywhere. They saw starving people eat mud pies to fill their
stomachs to curb hunger pains. For Theresa and Hazel, these images
are still fresh in their minds.
At
Mother Theresa’s Hospital, the nurses went to work starting
IV’s, and dispensing drugs while the rest of the group bathed
and massaged patients, many dying of TB and AIDS. The second half
of their mission was spent helping out at the clinic and school
in Labadee, a small village only accessible by boat. At the clinic
they worked along side a doctor from Cuba to organize the supplies
they had brought. After realizing that there was no medication to
treat the conditions they saw and if there was, the people had no
money to pay for it, Theresa and Hazel arranged to travel with Fr.
John Duarte to purchase medications much needed at the clinic.
Along
with the rest of the group, they painted the new school built last
year with money raised by Hearts Together for Haiti through Our
Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Windsor and stocked it with books
and supplies. The group also bought goats for the people of the
village with money donated by some of our staff.
Theresa
and Hazel experienced life in Haiti from a perspective few of us
could even imagine. After all they accomplished on this mission,
both nurses agreed that the one thing they will never forget is
the Cité Soleil (a suburb of Port-au-Prince) and its people
with hope burning in their eyes. When asked if they would return
to Haiti on a future mission, their response was “How can we
not?”
Theresa
Tremblay and Hazel Smith |
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