healing art missions clinic
TAKE A LOOK INSIDE THE CLINIC IN DUMAY.
Filmed onsite in 2012, this short film explores the many roles the clinic plays within the community of Dumay. Interviews with the clinic's employees, the medical director and surgeon, Dr. Jean Fritz Jacques and Healing Art Missions founder, Dr. Tracee Laing narrate some of the challenges and triumphs of Centre De Santé Communautaire De Dumay.
improvements in the operating room
In 2017, we began a program to improve the OR at the Healing Art Missions Clinic. We installed doors and windows that seal, allowing us to keep the OR clean and dust free. Sealing the OR also allowed us to install air conditioning (100%) solar powered). This helps keep the surgical field sterile on hot tropical days when the surgery team gowned and gloved. In the 100 degree heat, it’s difficult to keep sweat from dripping in the sterile field. Now we can keep our OR in the 70’s - we have also purchased needed equipment like an anethesia machine, and continue to make upgrades.
The cholera clinic in dumay during an outbreak.
During an emergency Cholera outbreak of 2012 these short films both explain more about the water borne illness Cholera as well as document what the clinic in Dumay looks like during a crisis.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) reported that as of March 10, 2014, cholera in Haiti accounted for more than 700,000 cases and the death of 8,500. The cholera outbreak in Haiti occurred in October of 2010 after the massive earthquake that devastated the country on January 12, 2010. However, the latest news from the PAHO is good, that the number of cases and deaths has significantly decreased. The Epidemiological Update states: “Between 1 January and 10 March of 2014, 3,850 cholera cases had been recorded, including 18 deaths (the cumulative case-fatality-rate for 2014 is 0.5%), signifying a weekly average of 385 cases and 2 deaths. This is lower than what was registered in 2013 (weekly average of 1,106 cases and 9 deaths), in 2012 (4,429 cases and 77 deaths weekly average), and in 2011 (29,167 cases and 243 deaths weekly average).”
At the Healing Art Missions Clinic, we have experienced this dramatic decrease, with the vast majority of patients arriving at the cholera clinic suffering from simple diarrhea and not cholera. As a result, at the beginning of March 2016 we shifted the cholera clinic from a full 24/7 operation to a cholera stabilization and re-hydration clinic, open Monday through Friday during normal Centre de Santé clinic hours. An on-call nurse is accessible by phone after hours and on the weekends.