23 June, 2004
As part of its continuing flood relief intervention that started last month, the Batey Relief Alliance (BRA) is sponsoring a GWUMC team of 20 volunteer medical specialists, public health students and faculty traveling from the United States to Hispaniola?s disaster flood areas. ?BRA?s flood relief intervention is carefully designed not to be duplicative, but to provide culturally oriented and adequate life-saving assistance to survivors where possible, when and as much as it is needed,? said Ulrick Gaillard, Executive Director of the BRA.
BRA Dominicana is coordinating the work of the foreign staff in Jimani where they will labor side-by-side with local providers at designated clinics from July 20-24. We will then cross them the border from Alias Pinas into Haiti at Belladere, where they will work in towns of Thumonde and Cange jointly with partner groups such as MediShare and Dr. Paul Farmer?s Partners In Health from July 26-29. Haiti?s General Consul to the Dominican Republic, Edwin Paraison, has guaranteed BRA visiting visas for the entire group to Haiti. The Dominican?s Ministry of Health (SESPAS) is also partnering with BRA in logistics and personnel.
Dr. Glenn W. Geelhoed ? Professor of Surgery, International Medical Education, Microbiology and Tropical Medicine, will head the George Washington University Health Team. ?We are responding to the needs of our Caribbean neighbors already destitute under the stress of the recent disasters,? said Dr. Geelhoed.
Immediate assistance will be in rendering acute care in clinics set-up where prior facilities might have been destroyed or damaged. The principle function on the volunteer health providers’ side is to indigenize expertise in handling common problems with locally appropriate solutions, including empowering victims with instructions and medicines to leave with them and the expertise in their continued use after the relief teams depart.
?Our biggest product is not health care but HOPE! We view this mission as a gesture toward the people afflicted, that someone has heard about their problems, cares about them and will try to help them help themselves with some aid to get re-started in the locally appropriate responses to daily emergencies with restoration of some rudiments of health care,? added Dr. Geelhoed.
Officials of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs have made a recent assessment, noting that residents of areas such as Haiti?s Mapou district still urgently need thousands of blankets, mattresses, hygiene kits and kitchen equipment. Relief workers have been unable to reach the survivors because of the location, which is only accessible by aircraft, since the roads to Mapou also needs land stabilization work in certain areas to make them accessible and safe by a ground crew.
BRA, so far, has allocated more than US $1.2 million in donated medicines, vitamins, clothes, food and food supplements and emergency medical aid for its dual-phased flood relief operation. Funds in cash have also been raised to cover other immediate operational needs. In-kind donations came from partners including Direct Relief International, Catholic Medical Mission Board, Food for the Poor, Heart to Heart and MAP International.
The first phase (short-term) of the BRA?s flood relief intervention started in May by sending staff and associates out to evaluate food disaster areas in Jimani, batey Chirino in Monte Plata, Barrio La Barquita in Santo Domingo, Bajos del Yuna in Cibao, Font Verettes, Mapou, Anse-a-Pitre and Font Parisiens. Some of the accounts came from member organizations to the BRA?s Alliance, including Servicio Social de Iglesias Dominicana (SSID), FUSABI, Coordinadora de Animación Socio-Cultural (CASCO), Pastoral Haitiana en el Distrito Nacional, Colectivo de Salud Popular, Fundación Todo por la Salud (FUNTOSALUD), Fundación de Desarrollo Rural y Salud, Asociación de Mujeres para el Desarrollo y Pro Caribe. BRA then dispatched Dr. David Loeb, a BRA?s volunteer infectious disease expert, to Jimani from June 8-11 to do a short-term health assessment with local government health offices and to administer care. Meanwhile, BRA distributed boxes of medicines, food and food supplements and clothes to some of its member health organizations to distribute directly to needy families and children. Similar distributions in rice, beans and milk are scheduled to take place again this month for Haiti via Pastoral Haitiana.
BRA has already scheduled a second medical mission trip to Haiti with the Florida chapter of Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad (AMHE) in August. BRA?s medical director, Dr. Raymond Thertulien, will arrive in September to conduct a thorough review of the work and assess long-term health needs for the affected populations on both sides of the island.
The second phase (long-term) of the BRA?s flood relief intervention involves selecting key and reliable partners and raising more funds to be part in the rebuilding of the flood affected towns in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, with characteristics of disaster prevention and long-term health and education needs.
Many lives are still at stake in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. BRA seeks to help other communities, in addition to Jimani, Mapou or Font Verettes, that have too been devastated, but overlooked by the media. BRA critically needs your life-saving help in funds and medicines. Please make your tax-deductible contribution on line at DONATE NOW! or by mailing in your checks payable to Batey Relief Alliance, P.O. Box 300565, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11230.
For more information, please visit BRA at www.bateyrelief.org or contact Ulrick Gaillard at bra@bkreative.net or (917) 627-5026.
