Support Investments in Infrastructure

Learning from decades of work in Haiti, PIH Co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer coined the “five S’s” necessary for good health care: staff, stuff, space, systems, and social support. The middle three S’s form the strong backbone of a health system: having the right medications, supplies, and equipment on hand for clinicians to diagnose and treat patients; maintaining the functionality and dignity of hospitals and clinics, from their waiting rooms to their operating theaters; and developing the tools and procedures to allow care delivery to run smoothly, from how patients are triaged to how their medical records are stored.

All of these infrastructural elements are interlocking, and in Haiti, unjustly, none of them are a given. Take electricity as an example: Less than half of Haiti’s population has access to electricity, and in Mirebalais, at the time of the building of University Hospital, the area’s power went out for an average of three hours a day. Unreliable electricity poses an enormous challenge to running any health facility–surgeries are jeopardized; neonatal ventilators stall; medications aren’t temperature-controlled; and the phones and laptops necessary to schedule procedures, order supplies, and record patient outcomes run out of power.

In the face of such scarcity, Zanmi Lasante has spent decades investing in the stuff, space, and systems that enable quality patient care. Our facility-based investments in sustainable infrastructure include:

• Electricity at all 17 health facilities
• Solar power at University Hospital in Mirebalais which saves nearly $400,000 in electricity costs annually
• Custom supply chain software for the easy purchase and inventory tracking of medications and supplies
• Custom electronic medical records system, so clinicians can record and store patient medical histories across departments and facilities
• Advanced medical and diagnostic technology such as University Hospital’s Level-3 biosafety lab
• Wards regularly evaluated and expanded based on patient volume—for example, a recently expanded maternity ward at Saint-Michel Health Center in Boucan Carré
• Mosaics, murals, ironwork, and courtyards to provide beautiful, dignified spaces for clinicians to work and patients to heal

Durable, sustainable infrastructure—from physical buildings to data systems—supports each of the 1.3 million (and counting) people we serve. But crises are mounting to make progress harder: from global supply chain challenges related to COVID-19, to rising fuel prices, to worsening climate change and an increase in the frequency and intensity of “natural” disasters that can in an instant destroy crucial health infrastructure. In the face of these threats—and given the continual increase we see in patients seeking care from Zanmi Lasante—we remain as committed as ever to maintaining and expanding the systems and resources that make quality health care possible.