In 1998, the Inter-American Development Bank awarded $54 million in loans to the Haitian government to improve the country’s patchwork, crumbling public-water system. The money was intended to bring clean water to people who for many years had been denied this basic human right. But after ten years of red tape and delays, the Haitian water system has actually gotten worse.

A recent report from Partners In Health, Zanmi Lasante, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center exposes the U.S. government's role in blocking the disbursal of loans that would have had life-saving consequences for the Haitian people. Read more

Partner profile: pedaling for patients

Visiting 16 patients scattered among the rural hills of Malawi not once but twice every day? "No problem!" says one village health worker named Briston Threemunthu.
Read Briston's story

Bringing vital skills to operating rooms in Haiti

As a child growing up in Haiti, Marie Myrléne St. Vil Marius decided to dedicate her life “to people who have nothing and are in need.” This commitment was Marie's motivation for becoming a nurse, and later, for leaving the relative comfort of a hospital in the capital city to work at PIH’s partner organization Zanmi Lasante in Haiti’s impoverished Central Plateau. Most recently, it brought Marie to Boston, where she and three colleagues received formal training for operating room nurses that is not offered anywhere in Haiti. Read more

60 Minutes to watch... and a lifetime to act
This May, CBS's 60 Minutes featured a segment on the work of Partners In Health. In case you missed any part of the broadcast, it can be viewed here. If the images you saw and the voices you heard have inspired you, learn more about how you can contribute to PIH's work in Haiti, and the movement for health and social justice around the world.

Croc attack: Trendy footwear fights sand fleas in Haiti
They’re bright. They’re comfy. They’re trendy. They’re Crocs – the gaudily colored plastic shoes worn by fashionistas across the US. This summer, they're also on the feet of thousands of children, women and men in the central plateau of Haiti. But this sudden popularity wasn’t dictated by fashion. The shoes were prescribed by doctors to treat a major public health problem – an epidemic of tungiasis (sand fleas). Read more and watch a video on YouTube.

Rwanda's rural health initiative brings quality care and home visits to Burera
A young, widowed mother of five named Patricie was suffering from both advanced HIV/AIDS and disseminated tuberculosis. So PIH's Dr. Patrick Almazor decided to pay her a visit at her home--a two hour climb up the hills of rural Rwanda. For PIH, such home visits are an integral part our work. There is no substitute for the opportunity to sit with a patient in his or her home in an effort to understand the social, economic, and structural forces that shape lives and contribute to illness. So Dr. Patrick's trek was business as usual. But what made this particular visit special was the fact that it was the first home visit from the new Burera District Hospital. Just a few months ago, there was no hospital and just a handful of health workers to care for Burera's population of nearly 400,000.

Accompaniment Guide for MDR-TB patients
Socios En Salud, PIH's partner organization in Peru, has published a simple, illustrated guide for participants in their Peer Mentorship program. The participants are former MDR-TB Patients who provide education, advice and treatment support to help current patients through the two long years of treatment. The SES Accompaniment Guide is now available for download (in Spanish).
[Download PDF, 9MB]

PIH helps bring quality care to the only district in Rwanda without a hospital
For years, the 360,000 residents of the Rwandan district of Burera relied on a single doctor and a hospital that existed only in name. Not any longer. On March 20, what had been "an abandoned building where goats were hanging out" opened its doors as a beautiful new 24-bed ward, staffed by 43 skilled health professionals. The inauguration of the new ward marked a major milestone for the effort by the Rwandan government, PIH and the Clinton Foundation to bring quality health care to every corner of rural Rwanda.

Healing hearts in Rwanda
A volunteer surgical team from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston recently began a mission to help Rwandans suffering from heart failure (often caused by Rheumatic Heart Disease, or RHD). This condition leaves thousands of Rwandans gasping for breath in a process of slow suffocation that can only be treated with surgery, which medical facilities in Rwanda currently cannot provide. Enter Team Heart. This spring, the team began began performing life-saving surgeries while working with PIH, a local hospital, and the Rwandan Ministry of Health to establish a self-sustained cardiac surgery program in the country. Team Heart has started a blog to document their innaugural trip. PIH co-founder Paul Farmer was one of the first to post.

New hospital opens in Haiti's Central Plateau
A new hospital opened in January in the Central Plateau of Haiti. Built through a partnership between the Haitian Ministry of Health and Zanmi Lasante with funding from AmeriCares, the new facility will help serve the communities of Lascahobas and Lacolline. Before the construction of the hospital, patients had literally flooded into a small, poorly-equipped health center. “The people of Lascahobas and Lacolline, like all the people of Haiti, deserve modern health infrastructure,” said PIH Co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer, who attended the event along with Haitian President René Préval.

PIH news archive