Public Health
March 2008
Right now, we are nearing the end of the dry season, and the dirt roads we travel on are dusty and hard. The land around our clinic site is dry and crops are struggling to survive. We’re hoping some rain will start to fall soon; otherwise, the farmers are in danger of losing many of…
Read MorePublic Health Corner December 2007
You will notice that we write quite often about the goal of providing primary health care to the people in the areasurrounding our clinic site in Gatineau. You may wonder what, exactly, is primary health care? Basically, it refers to the first level of health care in the community and may include some or all…
Read MorePublic Health Corner October 2007
When we think of public health, we think or populations of people, whether in a village, city, country, continent or theworld. In fact, the motto of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where I recently received my Master of Public Health degree, is “Saving lives, millions at a time”. As Christians, however, we are…
Read MoreClinic Opening – First Week Update
I wanted to give you a little update about our clinic opening on the 28th of August. There were over 100 people waiting for us when we arrived at the little house where we were to hold the clinic. We took in all our supplies and medications and got all set up, then greeted everyone…
Read MorePublic Health Corner March 2007
One of the things that is very important to us in terms of the sustainability of our work here in Haiti has to do with community participation. When the local community participates in the development of a project, both in terms of planning and implementation, the project is more likely to succeed over the long…
Read MorePublic Health Corner October 2006
One of the things that is very important to the success and long-term sustainability of this project is community involvement. Those of you who have spent time in Haiti know how difficult it is to get Haitian communities to organize themselves to accomplish a task. They don’t trust one another and don’t often like to…
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