New hospital opens in Haiti's Central Plateau

A new hospital has opened in the Central Plateau of Haiti. Built through a partnership between the Haitian Ministry of Health and Zanmi Lasante, the new facility will help serve the communities of Lascahobas and Lacolline. Before the construction of the hospital, patients had literally flooded into a tiny under-staffed, poorly-equipped health center.

A throng of people gathered to inaugurate the hospital, including Haitian President René Préval and Haiti’s Minister of Health, Dr. Gabriel Timothé.

“The people of Lascahobas and Lacolline, like all the people of Haiti, deserve modern health infrastructure,” said PIH Co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer, who also attended the event. “This facility was built by our team--which includes hundreds of people from this area--to keep a promise made in 2002: that PIH and Zanmi Lasante would work with the Ministry of Health to improve public infrastructure at the same time that we take care of the sick, prevent illness, and train people to provide modern health care to the underserved.”

“This hospital includes a number of features that we believe are important innovations: it’s well ventilated, has outside waiting areas, and private rooms for people with active pulmonary TB, an airborne disease,” said Dr. Farmer. “It even has ultraviolet lights to kill the bacillus that causes TB.”

“We are grateful not only to our partners in the Ministry of Health, but to AmeriCares, the HHCF, friends from Chicago and the other groups that helped us to build this modern, safe hospital for the valiant people of this area,” said Dr. Farmer.