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Better Access to Quality Specialty Care for Haiti’s Poor

  • March 8, 2013

An innovative AmeriCares program in Haiti is funding the restoration of an emergency room destroyed by the 2010 earthquake and providing impoverished patients increased access to top quality specialty care.In the nightmarish days after the earthquake, injured patients swarmed Hopital Canape Vert, a premiere private hospital in Haiti. Despite the fact that their own emergency room had been wiped out, doctors there treated all incoming patients free of charge.Today, the Quality and Access program established by AmeriCares provides the damaged hospital with funding to purchase crucial medical equipment necessary to restore their emergency room to full capacity. In exchange, the hospital will provide up to $180,000 worth of free specialty care through a medical voucher program for patients in need. The care – ranging from procedures such as herniaplasty to tumor removal – would be unaffordable for the patients treated without these vouchers.Joseph Jolicoer is one patient whose life was improved by the Quality and Access program. The 70-year-old had a hernia repaired last year at Hopital Canape Vert using the program vouchers. Today, he is fully healed, and the years of pain he endured from his condition are a distant memory.“Thank you to the staff of AmeriCares for this gift,” said Joseph. “Without your help, God only knows how I would be suffering,”The voucher program gives the poorest patients access to complex and often lifesaving surgical procedures that typically only wealthy Haitians can afford. The restoration of the emergency room service, an important piece of health infrastructure, also helps to bring high-quality care to Haiti’s health system. In Haiti, few high-quality hospitals with the capacity to provide complex care exist, and they are crucial to the functioning of a health system. Thanks to the Quality and Access program, patients from all walks of life benefit from the health care that everyone deserves. Learn more about AmeriCares work in Haiti here.Read MoreDonate Now