Hope for Sight in Haiti

World Sight Day 2020 is October 8th, with this year’s theme being Hope in Sight. The purpose of World Sight Day is to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment, we wanted to highlight the work that Healing Art Missions (HAM) is doing in Haiti to connect rural communities to eye health. 

Haitian ophthalmologist, Dr. Marcelus performing follow-up eye exam

Access to eye care has been part of the patient services at HAM’s primary care clinic in Dumay since the early days. Optometrist and past HAM board member Dr. Jeanine Flood, was instrumental in training one of HAM’s early translators as an eye technician, Jean Herard Charles, and helped us open an eye clinic within the primary care facility in 2012. Today, Charles runs HAM’s eye clinic as well as being HAM’s Haitian Operations Manager and founder of the Charles Salomon Primary School in Port-de-Paix. Charles lives with his family in Port-de-Paix, which is on the north coast, so he must take a bus from his home to Port-de-Prince, then to Dumay to open the eye clinic one week per month. Charles performs eye exams, monitors glaucoma and cataract conditions, treats eye infections and distributes eye glasses. At the conclusion of the week, Charles is joined at the Dumay Clinic by Dr. Sadrac Marcelus, a Haitian ophthalmologist employed by HAM to follow-up with patients who exhibit more serious eye related issues previously screened by Charles. In 2019 the eye clinic performed 1,106 eye exams, 104 eye surgeries, and distributed 238 pairs of glasses throughout the community.

Charles and Dr. Marcelus seeing patients

In 2016 HAM received the donation of an operating microscope through a partner organization, the SEVA Foundation, which was transported to Haiti via another partner, Direct Relief International. Beginning in January of 2017, a third non-profit organization, Go Crazy, Do Good joined us in our partnership with the community of Dumay to perform cataract surgeries at the Dumay Clinic with HAM’s new operating microscope. Led by eye surgeon Dr. Brian Stahl of Dayton, Ohio, Go Crazy, Do Good has led eye surgery teams to perform cataract surgeries in Africa, Central America, and Jamaica, performing more than 20 medical missions before coming to Haiti the first time. Since then Dr. Stahl and his team have returned to Dumay each January through 2019 and performed 243 cataract surgeries since 2017. Because the socio-political turmoil and violence in Haiti ramped up midway through 2019 and into 2020, we put cataract surgeries on hold for this year, but Dr. Stahl has committed to return to Dumay with his team in the future and continue their annual cataract surgeries for the community.  

Dr. Marcelus working with patient

As Charles wears many hats at HAM, we have been able to utilize his services as an eye technician well beyond HAM’s Dumay Clinic. At the Charles Salomon Primary School, Charles performs annual eye exams on the more than 300 children attending, referring potential glaucoma and cataract cases to see an ophthalmologist, and writing prescription for glasses when needed. In 2018, Charles and HAM volunteer Susan Palleschi journeyed to the remote, mountainside village of Demier, to provide eye exams and identifying several community members with glaucoma and cataracts, and distributing reading glasses when necessary. We have been partners with the Demier community since the mid-2000’s, funding clean water and latrine projects, and paying the salaries of water technicians and a community health worker. The Demier patients with cataracts were then scheduled for surgery with Dr. Stahl’s team during their 2019 January mission. HAM arranged and paid for their transportation to Dumay and housed them at the clinic during their treatment.   

Charles beginning eye exams at the Charles Salomon Primary School

Charles talking with Patient in Demier

In recognition of World Sight Day, if you would like to help support HAM’s eye clinic or any of HAM’s projects in Haiti.

April/May 2017 Solar Mission Trip to Install AC in the OR

HAM board members, Paul Hammond and Keith Hare, arrived in Haiti on April 28, 2017 to lead a mission to update the solar collection and storage system at the clinic and to oversee the installation of an A/C system in the surgery room. Keith designed and installed the original solar system back in 2010 and as the clinic services have grown, so has the increased demand for electricity. The old system was pushed beyond capacity this past January when the eye surgery team performed 40 cataract surgeries in 3 days. We have long wanted to add air conditioning to the surgery room given the extreme heat of Haiti and our desire for to avoid corrupting the surgical field during procedures by the surgical team dripping sweat. 

Keith and Paul have been discussing an upgrade for two years now and Keith designed the upgrade to maximize solar collection and storage capacity. Prior to this mission, Paul had sourced and purchased in Haiti additional solar panels with racking system, and greater capacity batteries, and made arrangement for that equipment to be at the clinic before the teams arrival. Keith brought along two new charge controllers not available for purchase in Haiti, along with two of his nephews Aaron and Matthew, who both work as electricians for Hare Electric, their fathers business. This would be their first time to Haiti, though as with all the Hare family they have made many volunteer work trips to Nicaragua and are accustomed to challenging working conditions.

The team arrived in Haiti without incident and with all their luggage. Unfortunately, local transportation became a cloud over the mission as HAM’s Hilux truck had been stuck at the Toyota dealer for weeks with a broken radiator. We were forced to rent a van for the airport pickup and the following day when Paul, Aaron and Matthew had to run around Port-au-Prince collecting all the other electrical supplies needed for the installation. Renting vehicles in Haiti is an expensive venture, so the team needed to make the most out of the first two days to avoid the need for further vehicle rentals until Paul could sort out the truck problems. Once the team made it to the clinic on Friday evening, they immediately went to work measuring, identifying and inventorying all the electrical parts they might need over the next week.

Saturday started bright and early as Paul, Aaron, Mathew, interpreter Charles and driver Regi headed back to Port-au-Prince for some shopping. But first Paul needed to stop at the Toyota dealership to evaluate the status of the truck repair. Seems the dealership had been jerking our Haitian staff around regarding the radiator repair since it was first taken in for repair in February. They fixed it twice only to have it leak again within two days. They then told our staff it was unfixable and the radiator had to be replaced, but there was no new radiator of the right size available in Haiti and they would have to wait 4 months for the part to be shipped from Japan. When our staff located the correct radiator at a parts store on the other side of Port-au-Prince, the dealership told them to purchase it themselves and the dealership would install it for free. Not exactly what one expects when the vehicle is still under warranty, so Paul needed to involve himself directly. After visits to two different Toyota dealerships on Saturday, and a great amount of run around and arguing, we were finally assured that the repair would be fully completed under warranty and if a new radiator had been located they would purchase and install it ASAP. Of course they couldn’t do anything before Tuesday as they are closed Sunday and Monday was a national holiday. Fortunately, the remainder of Saturday’s shopping went well and we arrived back at the clinic with all the needed electrical parts. Keith had stayed at the clinic and begun the installation of the charge controllers. 

Sunday and Monday were extremely productive with the three Hares along with several Haitian helpers pretty much completed the system installation, except for the battery change. It was fortunate that the clinic was closed on Monday for the holiday, as it gave the team uninterrupted access to the clinic and no disruption to clinic operations. Work was ahead of schedule, so on Monday night the team joined the Haitian Labor Day Dumay Festival. Every year the community of Dumay holds such a festival to celebrate and promote the community, and HAM has always helped sponsor the event, but this was the first time a volunteer team has been there for the festivities. The party was held next door to the clinic at the K through High School next door to the clinic. The party was raging when we arrived and the community leaders on stage welcomed us graciously with speeches about all the HAM does for the community. There was good food and drink, arts and crafts for sale, music and dancing, and an overall good time. We enjoyed ourselves and were moved by the appreciation for HAM shown by the community.

The remainder of the week continued to be productive, with the solar and A/C systems fully installed and operational by Tuesday afternoon. Paul kept Aaron and Mathew busy with various maintenance projects around the clinic, including adding lights to the dehydration clinic and a few of the clinic rooms that needed additional lighting. The twins even did a little plumbing, carpentry, and helped Charles inventory and organize the recent order of plus and minus eye glasses and lenses we had ordered from China and had shipped directly to Haiti earlier in the year. Keith meanwhile studied and tweaked the solar system to maximize productivity. 

As for the truck, after a long and frustrating week of run arounds and arguments with the dealership, they ended up finally repairing the radiator to an acceptable state just in time to take Matthew and Aaron to the airport on Friday. Paul and Keith remained to make sure the system was working correctly, collecting data, and making sure and all was right before flying home Monday.

It was an extremely productive trip with everything planned accomplished. A huge THANK YOU goes out to Keith and his nephews Aaron and Matthew, for working so hard to get it all done and having such a great attitude the entire time.

Optometrist Opportunity

Healing Art Missions (HAM), a 501 (c) medical organization working in Haiti since 1999, is looking for an optometrist interested in joining at least one of our medical mission trips to Haiti annually. HAM funds and oversees a Haitian staffed primary care medical clinic in Dumay, Haiti, a subsistence farming community of 20,000 outside of Port-au-Prince. Along with doctor visits, a pharmacy, laboratory, vaccine clinics and clean water programs, we have an eye clinic with a trained eye technician who sees patients one week per month and a Haitian ophthalmologist who sees patients one day per month. Annually in January, a surgical team visits the clinic to perform cataract surgeries in our clinic surgical facility that includes an operating microscope.

HAM seeks an optometrist who can help oversee the eye clinic. Responsibilities would include: oversight and additional training of the Haitian eye technician, assessing current clinic eye equipment and helping plan for supplemental and replacement equipment, helping determine proper eye glasses inventory and eye medications for the clinic, seeing patients and working with the Haitian ophthalmologist and the U.S. based surgical team to determine the best options for treatment, working with suppliers of eye medications, glasses and eye equipment to identify and take advantage of programs that support such humanitarian eye programs as ours.

HAM’s Dumay eye clinic is currently stocked with the following equipment; autorefractor, tonopen, trial lens set and trial frame, Welsh Allen direct ophthalmoscope, Heine BIO, 20D lens 78D lens, Visual acuity charts.

Contact Dr Janine Flood, OD at floodmjk@roadrunner.com or healingartmissions@gmail.com if interested in this unique and important opportunity.