Monika Kaira Varma, Director of the Center for Human Rights at the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, shares her thoughts on the 2007 Cange Forum.

For PIH and our partner organizations, 2006 was a year of daunting challenges and striking achievements. For the second consecutive year, we launched a new project, this time in Lesotho. We also strengthened and expanded our operations in countries where we have been working for many years. We constructed and inaugurated new facilities in Peru, Haiti and Rwanda. We substantially increased the numbers of patients we serve and initiated major new programs to serve them better.

Zanmi Lasante continued to deepen and broaden its services to the poor of Haiti in 2006, inaugurating new facilities, programs and partnerships. Even as Zanmi Lasante mourned the tragic death of Jean Gabriel fils, who had led and inspired construction of dozens of new homes and other activities of the Program on Social and Economic Rights (POSER), ZL staff found new resolve to carry on his commitment to social justice.

Thanks to the dedicated efforts of Zanmi Lasante

More than 13 years ago, Denizard Wilson was diagnosed with AIDS. Soon he was too sick to continue working in Port-au-Prince, too poor to afford medical care, fearful that time was running out. Then he moved back to his hometown in the Central Plateau and went to PIH for treatment.

Jean Gabriel Fils died on May 28 in Central Haiti, where he had lived all his life.

Zanmi Lasante joins forces with the UN World Food Program

Dr. Jonas Rigodon, a Haitian physician who has been working with PIH/ZL since 2002, is moving to Lesotho.

Zanmi Lasante's Women's Health Project helps crush the cycle of poverty and disease.