Jacqueline Koch recently visited Merlin's projects in Haiti. Here she writes about visiting a mobile clinic to find out what it really means to have limited access to health care.
Creeping up a near-vertical rocky track fit for a donkey, we are heading into the heart of rural Haiti to a mountain village of 10,000 people called Arnoux. I'm in a three-car convoy of 4x4 vehicles with a team of local medical staff who have packed the cars with medicines and supplies.
As we ascend, cars have disappeared and we yield to an increasing number of donkeys and people carrying jerry cans of water. Kids wave from the front of their houses made in a local style of wattle and daub. Roosters peck around outdoor kitchens in swept dirt yards.
Arnoux's main square, a dusty dirt lot, is where the occasional car that survives the journey is parked. It is anchored by the Arnoux Dispensary, where the medical team will be working. When the mobile clinic convoy arrived at 10 a.m., I counted close to 150 people trying to squeeze into the narrow shade of the clinic's waiting area. The local health agent for a rural farmers' advocacy group greeted and informed us that the clinic was largely defunct because the government health staff that used to visit hasn’t come in six months.
"Limited access to health care" is a phrase often bantered about in global health circles and Arnoux gives me a three-dimensional perspective of what this really means. The abandoned clinic has no electricity and the fridge, which would normally be used to keep medicines and vaccines cold, is dead. Also, there is no running water. Should anyone here get seriously ill, it's a three to four hour journey by foot to the nearest hospital.
By the end of a long day, the mobile clinic team saw 160 patients. Many seem to have simple ailments, such as skin infections, upper respiratory infections or the odd fever. As we know, if these conditions are not diagnose or treated an infection could develop into an abscess or, at worst, a more life-threatening septicemia or a fever could be the onset of malaria.
I remarked to our translator, Augusta Paul, that I was impressed at how nicely dressed the patients were, as if they were going to church. "You can tell it's a big deal to them," she said. "They don't often get to see a doctor, so it's a special occasion. They want to dress for it."
Help us save lives: Please donate now
Read more about our work in Haiti