Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, the fifth poorest in the entire world and a country where 80 percent of its inhabitants live under the poverty line. The disastrous earthquake of January 12, 2010 killed more than 300,000 and left tens of thousands of victims with severe orthopedic injuries. It rapidly became apparent that no infrastructure survived the earthquake that could manage in any effective way the huge numbers of patients with fractures and other injuries. It also became clear in the weeks and months that followed that there had never been a clinical facility in the country that was available to the indigent to care for most chronic orthopedic conditions. Children and adults with major foot, leg, arm and spine deformities presented to the clinics and hospitals serving the earthquake victims. Those deformities caused by birth defects, burns, developmental conditions, trauma and infections had been present and largely untreated for years and even decades.
It is the dream of many associated with Haiti Adventist Hospital to provide excellent orthopedic care to all Haitians regardless of their financial resources and ability to pay. No patient should ever be turned away from the door. However, Haiti Adventist Hospital, like all functioning hospitals has a budget with costs and overhead that are substantial. Those costs can be met for the patients with the resources to pay for medical care. Providing care for the indigent in this setting presents a challenge. That care can be effectively provided only if there is an outside source for addressing the financial burden this would place on the hospital. An independent endowment, the Haiti Indigent Patient Fund, with the sole purpose of supplementing and subsidizing the actual costs associated with their care would address a major part of the challenge. The second part would be to have professional services provided free of charge. This would involve visiting volunteer surgeons and anesthesia providers working cooperatively with Haitian specialists to provide services gratis. All proceeds from the sale of the book will go directly to the Haiti Indigent Patient Fund. Any patient unable to meet the hospital costs associated with their orthopedic care would have access to the fund to subsidize those hospital costs thus ensuring availability of that care for all.
