TOGETHER, WE STAY

Infrastructure Manager Steve Mtewa watched as people streamed into Dambe Health Center on its opening day in Neno, Malawi, last year. He knows what people in his rural community face when they’re sick. Getting ill is possibly the worst challenge because reaching clinics is time-consuming and costly.

We treated 108 people that day, among them five patients with such severe hypertension they were at risk of stroke, four with suspected tuberculosis, and 47 who tested positive for malaria — and it wasn’t even malaria season.

This center will serve 30,000 people in and around Dambe; the staff at other facilities we built and renovated around the world this year will care for hundreds of thousands more. By investing in infrastructure, mobilizing equipment and medicine, and providing clinical expertise, we are prepared to respond to immediate and long-term crises.

New maternity waiting homes in Malawi, Haiti, Lesotho, and Mexico provide safe, clean places expectant mothers can stay before and after delivering their babies. When it comes to delivery, women have access to trained midwives and, if complications arise, they are referred to a nearby facility for lifesaving procedures.

We worked with the Ministry of Health to improve infrastructure and care at the National Tuberculosis Hospital in Monrovia. We also began improvements to Pleebo Health Clinic and a nearby referral facility, J.J. Dossen Memorial Hospital.

In Haiti, we opened the Stephen Robert and Pilar Crespi Robert Regional Laboratory, which sits next to University Hospital. The proximity means that oncology patients who previously waited three months to receive a diagnosis can now get one in three weeks.

In Rwanda, we began construction on a 250-acre campus for the University of Global Heath Equity. When complete, classrooms, administrative buildings, a library, and dorms will drape a picturesque hill in northern Burera District. Thousands of students and health professionals from around the world will learn not only how to treat patients, but how to build health systems — eventually enabling them to run the provision of health care in their home countries.

That is the goal that drives our work. Whether a new waiting home, refurbished hospital, or cutting-edge university, these investments are symbols of our long-term commitment to the communities we serve.

We Go. We Make House Calls. We Build Health Systems. We Stay.

See Partners In Health's full 2016 Annual Report.