Partners in Health

Many of the more than 300,000 people wounded by the January 12 earthquake endured serious injuries ranging from crush wounds to compound fractures, from amputated limbs to spinal injuries. These patients will require ongoing and specialized rehabilitation. PIH/ZL anticipates that we will need to provide long-term treatment for roughly 900 to 1,500 patients now living with permanent earthquake-related injuries.

Over the past six months, ZL has worked closely with many new and existing partners to help our patients receive the care they need. We have recruited at least 37 physical therapy and rehabilitation professionals from the US. These volunteers provided invaluable services and trainings. Hopital Albert Schweitzer and Hanger Orthopedics are two partners that have been instrumental in fitting many of our amputee patients with prosthetic devices, and helping them to make full use of their new limbs. Through Whirlwind and the Walkabout Foundation, 400 specially-designed wheelchairs have been distributed to PIH/ZL patients across Haiti.

ZL has also worked to create a new program to carry on rehab activities on a permanent basis. The newly formed rehab team hires and trains local community members to be physical therapists, technicians, and community health workers—a few of our own amputee patients are now working as community health workers. The team eventually hopes to form a cadre of 50 community health workers who are specialized in providing accompaniment for amputees, which will help to expand the community-based accompaniment approach that has been PIH/ZL’s strength in Haiti and around the world.

At present, this team works closely with ZL’s mental health and psychosocial team, using its network of social workers, community health workers, and psychologists to help disabled patients deal with the mental and emotional issues that so often go along with loss of limbs and/or mobility. Members from each team often partner together when visiting patients either in their homes or at PIH/ZL’s mobile clinics. The psychosocial team’s established presence in Port-au-Prince also helps to ensure that the patients who traveled to ZL hospitals in the Central Plateau to seek care are followed up with after they return home.

Having a new physical therapy team has also helped ZL better serve patients in the Central Plateau suffering from disabilities not related to the earthquake, including stroke victims, survivors of car accidents, or patients with cerebral palsy. The team plans to train 2,040 of our community health workers in the identification and assessment of patients with disabilities.

PIH/ZL is also developing a training program in rehabilitative medicine, one that augments our capacity to provide rehabilitative care in the community. Over the next two years, we plan to create a facility-based rehab and orthopedic care center at our largest sites in St. Marc, Hinche, and Cange. We are also developing a nine-month Rehabilitation Training Program in partnership with St. Nicolas Hospital in St. Marc. This program will lead to the training and placement of two physical therapy technicians at each of our facilities in the Central Plateau and Artibonite departments.