HAM’s Haitian Staff Working to Make a Difference

February 7, 2022 was supposed to be the last day of the Jovenel Moïse presidency. Without a president, the acting head of state is Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who was appointed by president Moïse shortly before the president was assassinated. Henry, who was not elected and has been implicated in Moïse’ death, has stated “our institutions are completely dysfunctional…elections are the only way forward.” Yet, Haiti has no constitutional leader and there are no elections scheduled. The Dominican Republic has begun building a border wall along almost half of the 244-mile land boundary it shares with Haiti, to stop irregular migration and the smuggling of goods, weapons and drugs. These are some of the past month’s headlines from Haiti. 

Having spent the past 24 years collaborating with rural Haitian communities to provide the necessary resources and funding to fight the conditions of structural poverty, we at Healing Art Missions (HAM) know the Haitian population as warm, hardworking, and desperate for the opportunity to improve the quality of life for themselves and their families.  

It’s true that life in Haiti is extremely hard in this moment of a failed government, corruption, growing economic instability, and the lack of security in most any form. The Dumay community of approximately 20,000 people, the primary populations HAM serves and where HAM’s Primary Care Health Clinic is located, has been controlled by gangs for the past year. Gangs control the surrounding communities including the closest major city Croix-des-Bouquet and into Port-au-Prince. Travel from Port-au-Prince to Dumay, a commute many of our doctors and specialists are required to travel to and from work, involves passing through zones where different gangs compete and where gun battles often break out. Dr. Jacques, HAM’s Haitian director, has successfully negotiated with the gang leaders who control the areas including and surrounding Dumay, to allow the HAM Clinic to continue operating. Over the next few months, we are going to introduce you to some of HAM’s newly hired, courageous health care workers at the Dumay clinic. This month we feature Dr. Thelusma, our new Ophthalmologist, charged with running the eye clinic in Dumay.   


Dr. Machnally Thelusma at work in Healing Art Missions’ Dumay eye clinic.

Dr. Machnally Thelusma lives in Port-au-Prince and currently works in Dumay two days a month. She is a 2019 graduate of the Haiti State Medical School, and a PGY2 Resident in Ophthalmology at Hopital de l’Universite d’Etat d’Haiti (HUEH). When asked why she chose her field of medicine, she said, ”I’ve always wanted to work in a specialty that allowed me to help a lot of people in Haiti, and I think ophthalmology is one of them because we have only a few ophthalmologists here in comparison to other specialties. We have a lot of people with eye disease in Haiti. For me, helping those people, will make a great difference in their lives.”  Doctor Thelusma added, “It’s a privilege to work at Healing Art Missions, the only hospital in the area with eye care services.  It allows me to do what I love for the people who need it the most.” 

We are grateful to have Dr. Thelusma on our HAM team!