Wednesday at Jasmin

Kids on the road to Jasmin with their homemade toy





Top of the morning to you from Haiti! Yesterday, we returned to Jasmin for our second day of clinics. Many people from Kerwin's even more remote parish, St. Nicholas, came to our clinic. St. Nicholas is about a 3.5 hour walk further up the mountain from St. Joseph's at Jasmin. Our patients reported walking 2-4 hours (one way!) to get to us. This included one 22 year old woman, who walked two hours one way so that her day old baby could be examined by a doctor.

The clinic saw 220 people and our dentist treated (extracted teeth!) from 25 people. Again, the differences in the health of the different communities was very evident. We saw many more people who had high blood pressure (some quite extreme who required immediate treatment), ring worm, other parasites, and more extreme malnutrition. There were many elderly who reported that they have a hard time climbing the mountains! Doctor Bob replied, "I do, too!"

Triage - Carol and her nursing students

Pharmacy - Gwen, Russ and I hard at work

When we returned to the guesthouse, we organized, counted, and repacked the leftover supplies and meds for our next trip in September. We will be so organized! So, for those of you planning ahead, we need glasses (reading of all strengths), tooth brushes, tooth paste, soap, cloth bags for the meds (11x14 size would be awesome!), and liquid tears. We have plenty of the various creams. There is a huge need for glasses to see at a distance (is that near sighted, or far sighted?). So, if anyone can figure out if there is a way to accomplish that in Haiti, please let Dianne or me know. We also could use an eye chart for testing the reading glasses and distance glasses - pictures, not letters.

We have arranged with our Haitian doctor Alex, to return to our communities in May to test the blood pressure of those whom we treated, and to adjust their medication accordingly. Another small step to sustainable Haitian staffed health care for our communities.

Today, we are going back up the mountain to visit the schools.