Overview

January 12, 2011, marks the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake that flattened much of Port-au-Prince and several nearby cities. With more than 20 years of experience in Haiti, a network of 12 hospitals and health centers, and more than 4,400 Haitian staff, Partners In Health (PIH) and our Haitian sister organization, Zanmi Lasante (ZL), stepped in immediately, both to treat thousands of desperately wounded people and to help restore and strengthen public health facilities and services.

Within weeks, we had developed and begun implementing a $125-million, 2.5-year “Stand with Haiti” plan to help Haiti recover and rebuild over the long term, working in partnership with Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP). Key elements of the plan include:

• providing comprehensive primary health care to more than 100,000 people living in four of the spontaneous settlements of tarps, tents, and makeshift shanties that have sprung up in Port-au-Prince;
• expanding clinical and social support services at our network of hospitals and health centers in the Central Plateau and Lower Artibonite to meet the needs of tens of thousands of people displaced by the earthquake and the communities that have taken them in;
• strengthening specialized medical services for which the earthquake had greatly increased a widespread, long-standing, and frequently unmet need, including surgery, rehabilitative medicine, and mental health;
• rebuilding and reinforcing the public health and health professional education systems in Haiti.

Over the past 12 months, we have made substantial progress in all of these areas, buoyed by an outpouring of financial support, and with the invaluable help of numerous partner organizations and volunteers. We have recorded more than 240,000 patient visits at our clinics in spontaneous settlements, have made important investments in infrastructure, staffing, and training at hospitals we operate jointly with the MSPP in the Central Plateau and Lower Artibonite, have more than doubled the size of our rehabilitative medicine and mental health departments, and have begun construction of a 320-bed national referral and teaching hospital in Mirebalais. When a cholera epidemic broke out in Haiti in mid-October, PIH and ZL again took a leading role as first responders, helping develop and implement plans to establish cholera treatment centers, and mobilizing effective community education, prevention, and treatment campaigns.

However, a year after the earthquake, more than a million displaced people are still living in spontaneous settlements. Conditions in the settlements, and the lack of progress in relocating residents to transitional or permanent homes, are emblematic of the difficulties still plaguing recovery efforts. Comprehensive plans for rebuilding and reform in all sectors – including housing, health, agriculture, and business development – are stalled because of a myriad of implementation and financial factors.

Addressing the broader challenges of earthquake recovery, PIH and ZL have advocated for a human rights-based approach that engages and employs the Haitian people, strengthens public institutions and governance, and works not just to repair the damage caused by the earthquake, but also to address the extreme poverty and lack of infrastructure that greatly worsened the disaster’s impact and weakened the country’s ability to respond.

Read testimony by Loune Viaud, Director of Operations at Zanmi Lasante, and PIH's joint statement: "A Call for Human Rights-Based Approach to Humanitarian Assistance for Haiti"

PIH/ZL’s Stand with Haiti recovery plan embodies all of these principles. Since the earthquake, we have employed hundreds of Haitians in the settlements and in poor rural areas. Hundreds more will get jobs and training during construction of the teaching hospital in Mirebalais. This flagship public teaching hospital also expresses our commitment to strengthening the public sector and building quality infrastructure and services that will encourage people to live and work in areas outside Port-au-Prince. And to ensure that funds actually reach the intended beneficiaries, every dollar that we have received for Haiti relief has been spent or programmed to implement the Stand with Haiti plan, as detailed below.