"Reaching out to the heart of our neighbors.”

A New Hospital and Hope for the People of Haiti

By Serge Geffrard, MD

In America, it is easy to take the availability of adequate healthcare for granted.  There are many medical professionals in the United States dedicated to providing safe, high-quality care to their community, and nearly every major city is equipped with state of the art facilities, specialists, and other resources necessary to provide such care.  However, this is not the case around the world.  As a Haitian national, I am painfully aware of this fact, and I have dedicated much of my professional life to bringing awareness to this disparity and to providing sustainable relief to the people of Haiti.

As a second year medical student at the University of Florida, I organized my first medical mission trip to Haiti in 1996, and in 2004, after returning from a trip to assist flood victims, I cofounded Project Haiti Heart with Dr. Ming Young.  Project Haiti Heart is a non-profit organization created to provide medical, humanitarian, and spiritual aid to the people of Haiti.  Knowing the importance of a physical structure dedicated to providing both care and training, we decided to focus our energy on building a Medical Center that could serve the people of Haiti’s immediate and long-term needs.  In 2005, Project Haiti Heart and The Haitian Christian Mission started construction of a Christian teaching hospital in Fond Parisiens (30 miles from Port-au-Prince).

In 2008, we completed the first phase of construction—the obstetrics and gynecology center.  The center includes a 2,000 square foot building, with an obstetric exam room, a delivery room, an operating room, a sterilizing room, and a maternity ward. At the time, we were unaware of the important purpose this facility would soon serve.  In January, Haiti was rocked by a 7.0 earthquake that debilitated most of the countries already fragmented infrastructure.  The central medical facilities in Port-au-Prince were destroyed or deemed too dangerous to use.  Fortunately, our facility survived the quake and has served as a major source of relief in the aftermath of this disaster.  Immediately following the quake, multiple medical groups from the US and Canada began using our hospital to provide life saving medical and surgical care for the victims of the tragedy. Over 100 patients are seen at the center daily and that number is growing as the population of Fonds Parisiens has nearly doubled with refugees from Port-au-Prince flooding the city in search of relief. 

The hospital is also serving as a home base for acute ‘non-medical’ earthquake relief efforts.  Since the earthquake, with the support of Georgia Pediatric Cardiology, Project Haiti Heart has distributed over 60,000 pounds of food, water, clothes, medical, and humanitarian supplies to the people of Haiti.  The majority of these supplies were donated by various individuals and organizations in the Atlanta area.  But in the midst of these necessary relief efforts, we have not lost sight of our goal of finishing construction of a medical center that will provide both primary and tertiary care to the Haitian people, and serve as a training center for the next generation of Haitian physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. In fact, we are closer now to having the financial resources and technical expertise necessary to realize our full vision for a state of the art Hospital in Haiti. 

Our partnership has expanded to include the Georgia Institute of Technology.  A group of engineers from Georgia Tech recently traveled to Haiti to perform a feasibility study for the remaining construction of the hospital on land donated by the Haitian Christian Mission.  Recently, the Board of Directors of Project Haiti Heart decided to proceed with the second phase of the hospital construction.  This next phase would include will include construction of a 6,000 square foot building which will include a multi-purpose emergency room, outpatient center, Xray and CT room, pediatric and adult wards, and an intensive care unit.  Below is a complete timeline for the hospital construction.

Formosa Christ For All Hospital Construction Timeline

Phase I:  Construction of the obstetrics and gynecology center (Completed in 2008).

Phase II:  Construction of the emergency room, outpatient center, adult and pediatric    wards, and intensive care (To be completed in 2011).

Phase III:  Construction of the cardiac center, cardiac catherization laboratory, and cardiac operating rooms (To be completed in 2013).

Phase IV:  Opening of the medical school and residency program (2015)

Project Haiti Heart

PO Box 43332

Atlanta, GA 30336

678-276-9758

E-mail: projecthaitiheart@yahoo.com